TEHRAN- As announced by a provincial official, 1,271 hectares of lands are under medicinal plants cultivation in Qazvin province.

Mohammad Pileh-Foroush, the director for horticulture affairs in the province’s Agriculture Department, also announced the production of 700 tons of different types of such plants in Qazvin during the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21).

According to the chairman of the Union of Medicinal Plants Exporters of Iran, the country’s export of medicinal plants can be increased through compliance more with the world standards.

Mohammad-Ali Rezaei Kamal-Abad stated that world standards are increasing due to the health-oriented consumption of herbal products, and failure to comply with these standards will lead to the return or destruction of these products.

“In the past years, poisons have entered the country, which are not only not used in other countries, but have also caused water and soil pollution in our country”, he lamented.

Referring to the importance of agricultural product export standardization, he added: “Standardization is done in our country, but this standardization is not up-to-date. With the coordination of ministries, expenditure and updating of information can help to standardize agricultural products and develop the export of these products”, he commented.

He said that having more than 11 climates out of 13 climates, Iran has 8,000 varieties of medicinal plants, which is at least twice as much as Europe.

MA