Minister of Agriculture of New Zealand will soon visit Tehran, with the intention of developing bilateral cooperation; the Ambassador of Iran in New Zealand introduces the kiwi fruit as one of the areas of cooperation.
Jalal Mianji, The Iranian Ambassador to New Zealand, said that the Director of International Affairs at Zespri will travel to Iran alongside a delegation from New Zealand.
“Due to Iran’s capacity in producing high amounts of high quality kiwi fruit, Iranian gardeners can cooperate with Zespri in order to export Iranian kiwi fruit to other countries under the Zespri brand”, said Mr Mianji, “Applying new technologies in order to improve the quality of Iranian kiwi fruit and especially golden kiwi fruit is one area of cooperation between Zespri and kiwi producers in Iran.”
Iran is one of the largest kiwi producers in the world. Based on official reports presented by the Ministry of Agriculture of Iran, between March 2015 and March 2016, 305 thousand tons of kiwi was produced in the northern provinces of Iran, i.e. Golestan, Gilan and Mazandaran.
FAO, however, announced the 2014 kiwi production of Iran at 43 thousand tons. Based on figures from FAO, New Zealand is the world’s third largest producer of kiwi fruit with an annual production of 410 thousand tons.
Zespri is the world’s largest marketer of kiwi fruit and has exportation to 54 countries. The Iranian Ambassador has said that as a first step, Zespri has reached an agreement with gardeners in Mazandaran for the purchase of 10 tons of produce for packaging and exportation and this company has begun investment in this province.
