TEHRAN- Mashhad, the capital city of Iran’s northeastern Khorasan Razavi province, accounts for 22 percent of the country’s flowers and ornamental plants export, according to the board chairman of the province’s Union of Flowers and Plants Producers.

Mehdi Samangani said that due to the availability of suitable infrastructure and access to the market, 65 percent of Khorasan Razavi’s greenhouses are located in Mashhad.

Mashhad's neighborhood with Turkmenistan and Central Asian countries has created a good capacity for exporting flowers and plants in Mashhad, he said, adding, “However, Mashhad's capacity for production and export, considering the infrastructure that this city has in the field of flower and ornamental plant production, is much more than our 22 percent share of flower and plant export in the country.”

As announced by the head of the Agriculture Department of Mashhad County, 280 greenhouse units operate in Mashhad City. These greenhouses have created direct employment for 1,400 people and indirect employment for 3,500 people.

According to Mohammad Miri Disfani, 66 hectares of greenhouses in Mashhad are related to ornamental flowers, in which all kinds of flowers and ornamental plants are produced.

Statistics show that Mashhad has a good capacity for the production of flowers and ornamental plants. Annually, 35 million cut flowers, five million flowers and plants in vases, and 50 million types of flower seedlings and ornamental plants are produced in Mashhad.

Meanwhile, as stated by Samangani, who is also the chairman of the Iranian Rose Society, Khorasan Razavi province accounts for the lion’s share of rose export from the country.

Underlining that the majority of roses are exported from Khorasan Razavi, he said: “Rose is the strategic flower of Khorasan Razavi, because the main export of roses from Iran is done from this province.”

Currently, roses are one of the most popular flowers in the world and are at the top in terms of production.

The U.S., Britain, The Netherlands, Kenya, Colombia, Ecuador, South Africa, and India are the main producers of roses in the world.

Iran has 17th place in the world in the production of flowers and ornamental plants, but it is ranked 107th in terms of export.

Every year, three billion flowers and ornamental plants are produced in the country, of which only 300 million are exported. 50 percent of the produced flowers are sold domestically and the rest is thrown away.

As stated by the chairman of the Flower Retailers' Association of Tehran, flowers and ornamental plants consumption per capita in Iran is 20, while the figure is 150 to 250 in the world.

“We must have mass production to reduce the price of flowers”, Gholam-Hossein Soltan-Mohammadi has stated.

According to him, to produce flowers and ornamental plants for export, it should be considered as an industry and the demands of target companies should be evaluated.

MA/MA