BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 21. Hormozgan Province, a southern region of Iran, saw a 15-percent rise in its date production this season (May 22 through September 6, 2023), compared to the same period last season, said Mohammad Reza Sheikhzadeh, an official of the Hormozgan Province Agricultural Department, Trend reports.
Sheikhzadeh noted that the province harvested 196,000 tons of dates from 38,000 hectares of land, with most of the yield coming from Minab, Rudan, Bandar-Abbas and Sirik counties.
He added that the main domestic markets for Hormozgan dates are Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan, Mashhad and Yazd, while the main foreign markets are the Persian Gulf countries, Malaysia, Türkiye, Pakistan, India and Russia.
The official expected that the province would export 45,000 tons of dates by the end of the current Iranian year (March 21, 2023 through March 19, 2024),
“Meanwhile, in the last year (March 21, 2022 through March 20, 2023), the province had exported dates worth $85 million,” Sheikhzadeh also said.
Iran’s Hormozgan Province exports one-fifth of its date harvest and consumes the rest domestically. It is the fourth largest date producer in the country.
The global average of date consumption per capita is more than 1 kilogram annually. However, Iranians consume 7-10 kilograms of dates per year, as they are locally grown. In Hormozgan Province, the consumption exceeds 10 kilograms per person.
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