A total of 450 tons of medicinal herbs were exported from Iran during the first half of the current Iranian year (March 20-Sept. 21), registering a 40% decline compared with the similar period of last year.
The statement was made by the director general of Rangeland Affairs Bureau with the Forests, Rangeland and Watershed Management Organization, affiliated with the Agriculture Ministry.
“The outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic has coupled with the tightening of economic sanctions against our country to make exports of these products more difficult. We estimate that 900 tons of medicinal plants will be exported by the [fiscal] yearend [March 21, 2021],” Tarahhom Behzad was also quoted as saying by IRNA.
The official noted that in the last Iranian year (March 2019-20), a total of 2,200 tons of medicinal plants were produced in the country, 1,820 tons of which worth $15 million were exported to European countries as well as Persian Gulf littoral states.
The harvest season for medicinal plants in Iran begins roughly around mid-February through late September.
Around 8,425 species of plants grow in Iran, some 2,300 of which have medicinal properties, or are used to make perfumes and cosmetics.
Hossein Zeinali, an official with the Agriculture Ministry in charge of the National Medicinal Plants Project, said that last year the area under cultivation of medicinal plants will increase to 280,000 hectares by the fiscal 2021-22.
So far, Behzad says, 200,000 hectares of the total sum have gone under the cultivation of these crops.
