Azerbaijan, Baku, Jan.30/ Trend F.Milad /
Iran will produce 50,000 tons of olive by the end of the current Iranian Calendar year (March 19), Alireza Esmaeili, an official with the Agricultural Jihad ministry said on Wednesday.
This is while Iran had produced 102,000 tons of olive last year, the ISNA News Agency reported.
Iran needs to import 3500 tons of rich olives in order to meet its domestic consumption of olive oil.
Esmaeili had said last month that the country imported 3947 tons of olives, olive oil and canned olives in the first six months of the current Iranian calendar year.
Iran is among the world's top olive-rich countries. Olives above five grams are used for canning and olives below three grams for extracting oil. Those between three to five grams are used in both cases.
Since olive from the south of Iran yields less oil compared to those cultivated in the north, the majority of the product will be canned.
Also, olives from the northern regions are usually processed into oil since the factories are located in north.
The main producers of olives in the world are Spain, Italy, Greece, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Morocco.