Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
Lattakia, SANA- Okra is a summer crop and one of the traditional homestead crops in Lattakia Province due to its high nutritional value, suitability to weather conditions, low water needs, in addition to its good productivity and the economic return it achieves for families working in this agriculture.
Mona Jouriyeh from the village of Sianou in Jableh countryside indicated in an interview with SANA that she devoted an area of her home garden to grow okra, which is considered one of the family’s favorite summer food, where she picks its fruits once every two days and collects them on a piece of cloth and then sorts, explaining that what her garden produces is sufficient for their needs.
Farmer Ahmed Hassan, who planted about 12 dunums of okra this year, indicated that its cultivation has become expensive nowadays, especially for owners of large farms, due to the high price of good seed, as the price of a kilogram of local seeds reached SYP 13 thousand, as well as fertilizers, agricultural medicines and the high labor costs.
Hassan added that the price of a kilogram of excellent okra in terms of quality and size reached SYP 1700 at the beginning of the season, while the price of a kilogram for good and medium quality ranged between 700 and 1000 Syrian pounds.
Engineer Haitham al-Hajji, Head of the Plant Production Department, said in a statement to SANA’s reporter that the area planted with summer okra in Lattakia province reaches up to 99 hectares distributed over the regions of Lattakia, Jableh, al-Haffeh and Qardaha, and production estimates have reached about 691 tons to date.
Al-Hajji added that the cultivation of okra begins from mid-March and continues until the end of September, and the harvesting process takes between 2 and 4 months.
Ruaa al-Jazaeri
