Crimea to claim world rose oil market leadership

MOSCOW, July 29 (Itar-Tass) - Crimea is prepared to compete with Bulgaria on the world markets of ethereal oils, including rose oil used in the food, pharmaceutical and varnish and paint industries, adviser to the acting Crimean head Rustam Temirgaliyev said on Tuesday. “We can become a vanguard in Russia and we’ll compete with Bulgaria on the world market of ethereal oils or rose oil,” Temirgaliyev said in an interview with the Russian business TV channel RBC-TV. The Crimean government is currently restructuring the local agri-business. Crimea’s agriculture was previously focused on grain crops while now the republican authorities are set to develop melons and gourds and ethereal oil crops, he said. Crimea started to grow roses at the Nikitsky Botanical Garden near Yalta on the Black Sea peninsula’s southern coast in 1930 as part of an experimental project. Special farms were selected in several districts on the peninsula for growing roses, which were subsequently supplied to the local enterprise Crimean Rose for processing. Rose plantations in Crimea covered an area of about 1,500 hectares before the launch of the local agri-business restructuring. Almost 2,500 tons of roses have to be harvested manually to reach an average annual output of 2.5 tons. Bulgaria has the world’s leading positions in the production of high-quality rose oil, exporting about 2 tons of its output annually to France, the United States, Australia, Japan and China. Learn more on itar-tass.com