BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 5. About 520,000 tons of sweet and sour cherries are expected to be harvested from 65,000 hectares of orchards in Iran for the current Iranian year (March 21, 2023, through March 19, 2024), an official of the Iranian Ministry of Agriculture Jihad Darioush Salempour said, Trend reports.
According to Salempour, the area of cherry orchards in the country is 40,000 hectares, and 360,000 tons of cherries are expected to be harvested. This means a 7 percent increase compared to last Iranian year (March 21, 2022, through March 20, 2023).
The official added that the area of sweet cherry orchards in the country is 25,000 hectares, and 160,000 tons of sweet cherries are expected to be harvested for the current year, which is an increase of 18 percent compared to last year.
“Iran is the third main producer of sweet cherry in the world, while the country ranks 7th in the world in terms of sour cherry production,” he said.
Salempour also noted that cherries are grown mainly in Iran's Tehran, Alborz, Razavi Khorasan, Qazvin, Mazandaran, East Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Ardbil, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan, and Hamadan provinces.
“Last year, about 13,000 tons of sweet and sour cherries worth $17 million were exported from Iran. Cherries were mainly exported to neighboring countries, including Turkmenistan, Russia, Afghanistan, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Oman, and other countries,” he added.
The area of orchards in Iran is about 3 million hectares. On average, 25 million tons of fruit are grown per year.
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