Vegetable any herbaceous plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, leaves etc are used as food. Nearly 100 different types of vegetable comprising both local and exotic type are grown in Bangladesh (table). Vegetable is important for nutritional, financial, and food security in Bangladesh. However, the availability of vegetable is only about 1/5th of the recommended requirement of 200 g/person/day.
Area and production The area under vegetable farming increased from about 1,71,830 ha to about 1,95,951 ha during 1990-1997. Likewise, the production of vegetable also increased from about 1.09 million m tons to about 1.29 million m tons during that period. However, summer vegetable cultivation is constrained by adverse climate and pest attacks. The major winter vegetables are cabbage, cauliflower, tomato, brinjal, radish, hyacinth bean, bottle gourd, etc while major summer vegetables are pumpkin, bitter gourd, teasle gourd, ribbed gourd, ash gourd, okra, yard-long bean, and Indian spinach among others. Some vegetables like brinjal, pumpkin, okra, and red amaranth are found to grow in both the seasons.
