Some 1.135 Mln. Tons of Citrus Production Expected

DAMASCUS, (ST) – Director of the Citrus Bureau at the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, eng. Suhail Hamdan, underlined that the expected production of citrus this year could exceed 1.135 million tons , which increases the production of the past year about 130 thousand tons .

The total citrus production for the last year season estimated at one million tons, 887 thousand tons in Lattakia, 205 thousand tons in Tartous and 12 thousand tons in the rest of the areas of Homs , Idlib, the Ghab Plain, Deir ez-Zour and Damascus.

Eng. Hamdan noted that more than 50 thousand families in Syria depend on the cultivation of citrus fruits as a source of income in addition to thousands of people who help them in various service operations and harvesting , transportation and marketing

“The economic importance of citrus, that their cultivation based in the coastal region mainly, constitutes about 53 percent of irrigated crops in Tartous and about 91 percent in Latakia, pointing out that Syrian citrus also is characterized by taste and distinctive smell as a result of climatic conditions available in the region,” Eng. Hamdan clarified.

It is noteworthy that the number of trees planted in Syria amounts to 14 million including 8 million trees of orange, 5.2 million trees of lemon tree and the rest is of different sorts of citrus.

Sh. Kh.