Itahari: Dhankuta Municipality is gearing up to host what it claimed to be the 'Asia's first' avocado festival. The tiny hilly Municipality of East Nepal is officially hosting the festival on the famed fruit on 24, November, 2018.
The one-day festival will be featuring around two dozen avocado stalls of local farmers and star perfomers will be prized, said Bikash Adhikari, the tourism department head of the municipality.
According to Adhikari, farmers will be prized as first, second, third and forth with cash prices of 15000, 10000, 5000and 3000 Nepalese rupees respectively.
The festival, to be inaugurated at 11 am tomorrow, will unveil the 'world's first' avocado statue and avocado park at Parichaya Mood of municipality.
Previously, avocado fruit was first introduced in Dhankuta after the inauguration of Pakhribash Agriculture Center (PAC) in 1972 by the aid of British Government.
Avocado was not produced in commercial scale until mayor Tamang elected as the mayor of the municipality in 2017. Mayor Tamang introduced support and subsidies on avocado farming as per the recommendation of his agricultural expert Jiwan Rai.
Mayor of Dhankuta, also the promoter of commercial avocado farming in Dhankuta, Chintan Tamang has distributed 10,000 avocado saplings in the municipality. 'We have more than 25,000 saplings of avocado in our municipality', says Tamang, 'we will create 100 thousands avocado saplings in the coming year.'
Mayor Tamang says Dhankuta has highest volume of commercial avocado farming. 'Because of biggest volume of commercial avocado farming and our priority to develop avocado as cash crops and base of agricultural tourism', adds mayor Tamang, 'we officially declared Dhankuta as the capital of avocado in Nepal.'
