Some 915,000 tons of pomegranates are estimated to be produced in Iran in the current Iranian year that ends on March 20, 2019, to register a 22% increase compared with the previous year.
“Last year (March 2017-18), close to 1,500 tons of pomegranates worth around $1.5 million were exported from the country. Our main export destinations were Armenia, the UAE, South Korea, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Qatar, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Austria, India, France and Pakistan,” Director General of the Ministry of Agriculture's Tropical and Subtropical Fruits Affairs Bureau, Masoud Latifian, was quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.
The main provinces growing pomegranate in Iran, according to the official, are Fars, Markazi, Khorasan Razavi, Isfahan, Yazd and Semnan, accounting for 25%, 11%, 10%, 10%, 7% and 6% of the country's total output respectively.
Pomegranates are cultivated on over 89,600 hectares of orchards across the country. Average production stands at 15 tons per hectare.
Iran, according to Latifian, is the leading pomegranate producer in the world followed by India with an average production of 900,000 tons per year.
Other main producers of the fruit are China with 300,000 tons, Turkey with 220,000 tons and the US with 210,000 tons.
Some 3 million tons of pomegranates are cultivated across the world per annum.
According to Latifian, the high amount of waste during harvest and post-harvest stages, pests and plant diseases, physiological disorders in the fruit and lack of processing industries are among the handicaps of pomegranate production in Iran.
Iran has the world’s biggest germplasm of pomegranates in Yazd, which is made up of a collection of 780 genotypes of the fruit.
The most important health benefit of pomegranates is that it helps slow down the skin-aging process. Pomegranate helps enhance cardiovascular health and is effective in treating anemia and staving off cancer, ISNA quoted Massoumeh Joulana, a nutritionist, as saying.
