Nangarhar to plant sweet orange on 3,000 acres land

JALALABAD (Pajhwok): Around 3,000 acres of land would be planted with sweet orange orchards in eastern Nangarhar province with the help of the private sector, which will increase the fruit’s production in the province.

Nangarhar, which has a Mediterranean climate, has good farm land for citrus fruit currently planted on over 1,400 acres of land.

Sweet orange produced in Nangarhar is famous for its quality and the fruit’s yield also increased this year.

MualviGhulamRahman, director of Wadi Agricultural Company at Nangarhar Canal Department, told Pajhwok Afghan News that the department twas working to establish more sweet orange orchards on around 3,000 acres of land with the support of the private sector.

He said work on establishing the orchards had started and land leveling as well planting of the fruit trees was underway.

About the current harvest of orchards in the province, he said that there were currently over 1,400 acres of sweet orange orchards in the province, of which 1,300 acres produced fruits. He said that hundreds of tons of the fruit would be collected this year from these orchards.

He says collecting and marketing sweet orange was now the private sector’s responsibility, an activity that also created jobs for hundreds of people.

Nangarhar’s citrus is famous all over the country and sweet orange which recently grown in the province has also become popular and is exported to other parts of the country.

Batikot is one of the districts in Nangarhar where largest sweet orange orchards exist and where thousands of locals are hired.

Some residents of the district say security problems had solved in their area and asked Canal Department to rehabilitate citrus orchards which were damaged during the conflict.

mds/ma

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