Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 10
By Elnur Baghishov - Trend:
Iran expects its saffron output to reach 400-420 tons in the current Iranian year (started March 2018), Hossein Zeynali, medical plants project manager of Iran's Ministry of Agriculture, said, Trend reports referring to IRNA.
Zeynali noted that 20,000 hectares of the total 112,000 hectares, allocated to saffron, were recently planted and therefore do not contribute to the harvest.
He stressed that saffron is planted in most of Iran's provinces, adding that Razavi Khorasan Province has 80,000 hectares of saffron fields and thus accounts for almost 80 percent of the country's total saffron output.
He went on saying that presently almost 200,000 families are involved in saffron production.
Annual average saffron consumption per capita is 4-5 grams, though presently, every Iranian uses less than 0.7 grams of saffron per year, Zeynali added.