About 214,000 hectares of vegetable farms went under sapling cultivation in the last Iranian year (ended March 20, 2018), director general of the Forage and Vegetable Bureau with the Agriculture Ministry’s Department of Agronomy said.
“Planting saplings instead of seeds saves between 2,000 and 2,500 cubic meters of water per hectare. Sapling cultivation was mostly practiced for onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and watermelons last year,” Hossein Asghari was also quoted by ILNA as saying.
The official noted that plans are underway to expand this cultivation method to all vegetable farms across the country by the end of the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2017-22).
