date palm road map

English. Date Palm is the second important horticultural crops of Iran which has confident high value of nutrition, especially through calamities like torrent, earthquake, war and drought. Besides, it has a lot of advantages such as high resistance against poor conditions of soil and water, essential cause of civilization in hot and dry regions, effective role in development of landscaping and desert rehabilitation, possibility in production of more than 50 industrial and alimentary bi-products from different part of tree (fruit, seed, leaf and trunk) and finally economic income from internal consumption and even export. Date palm is cultivating and producing in 34 countries of all 5 continents in the world. According to the latest reports of FAO in 2007, Iran is the second important producing country among dates producing countries of the world with 240000 hectares cultivated areas, around annually 1000000 tons fruit productions in 15 provinces of the country and 4.2 tons fruit production per hectare. Regarding genetically resources Iran has more than 400 cultivars (and due to some published reports near 600 cultivars) among 3000 different founded of the world, so it is place first. According to export news of FAO, the amount of exported fruits of Iran was 143354 tons in 2006 (second grade in the world) and its value was about 91.6 million US$ in that year, therefore each ton of exported fruits valued 639 US$ in comparing to 931 US$ of the world. There are 30000000 date palm trees in Iran approximately, which have employed directly by more than 450000 employees, according to the latest agricultural capitation in Iran in 2003. Unfortunately, around 30% are unread and just 1% of them having academic BA certification. Also, 33% of Date Palm plantations have less than 0.5 he

English. ctares and just 1% of them having more than 15 hectares. Therefore, production style of date palm is completely traditional in Iran that lead to high costs of production due to poor mechanization. Most date producers of Iran fertilize their plantations depending on their favorite, budget and availability of fertilizers, nevertheless it can be generally said that fertilizers never use in more than 50% of date plantations. Nitrated fertilizers just use in few plantations. Average rainfall of Iran is around 250 mm annually due to its location in arid and semiarid regions of the world. The average rainfall of the world is about 800 mm annually. In contrast, annual evaporation of the country is around 2100 mm whereas it is recorded about 700 mm for the world. Another view shoes the most portion of water in Iran consumes by agricultural divisions (93%), so it is very important to save and use high efficiently especially due to ecological situation of the country. Unfortunately, around 95% of date palm plantations are irrigated by surface methods which have low efficiency (37%). Studies showed low price of packed fruits, easy marketing and importers' preference prevent date producers to produce and export bi-products. Besides, insufficient educated exporters, also lack of enough support by government lead to low efficiency of date packaging factories. For instance, Khuzestan Jihad-e-Agriculture Organization permitted to 46 sorting and packaging factories to produce up to 78600 tons of packed fruits by the end of 2006 whereas they produced just 13000 tons. Another example showed 32000 tons of date liquid sugar and 1000 tons date syrup has to produce in Khuzestan whereas they are produced just 20 and 5 tons, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded that a lot of obstacles influence on date industry such as traditional production and harvesting, use of low yielded cultivars, lack of sanitary in the plantations, expensive production, insufficient frigid stores, traditional packaging systems, high cost marketing, low technical education of producers and exporters, weak investors, powerful international rivals, hard accessibility to international markets, and weak advertising systems. Hence, low yield, quality and price of date products, lack of mechanized plantations, high wastes and weak management ca be considered as the most important factors against date industry of Iran which have to change to reverse position entirely. Date palm program of the country involves 10 sub-programs as follow: - Research on different aspects of date production - Date protection (pests, diseases and herbs control) - Nutrition of date plantations - Promotion of findings on date palm - Insurance sub-program of date fruits and date plantations - Improvement of mechanization in date plantations - Training of specialists on date palm - Improvement of irrigation and drainage systems - To make more variations in bi-products of date - Up to dating of statistics on date and its bi-products All above mentioned sub-programs include more than 20 main designs that it is predicted to implement during next 10 years. The most important expectations are as follow if the program will implement completely: - get first grade in the world regarding annual production, yield and export - precise identification of local female and male cultivars with their distribution map and their quantitative and qualitative traits - preparing genetically ID for commercial cultivars - introducing the best usages of cultivars such as fresh consumption, export or producing bi-products - finding the best protocol for mass propagation - finding the best protocol for collecting and keeping of pollen grains - recommendation on the best method and time of pollination for commercial cultivars - recommendation on cultivating systems in order to save water and soil resources - recommendation on agro-technical practices in plantations to improve fruit quality, quantity and price - identification of physiological causes of date bunch fading disorder - findings on prediction and detection of important pests and diseases - get the best protocol of integrated pest management in order to decrease chemical pesticides - identification of standard on pesticide residue in order to health control - identification of new methods for sanitation of fruits in order to export - finding standard protocol of leaf and fruit sampling - finding the best recommendations on nutrition of plantations - finding the protocol of organic production - finding the best recommendations on irrigation of plantations - finding the best recommendations on mechanized harvesting - finding useful method for decreasing of fruit wastes - finding new formulations for new and economic bi-products - insurance of at least half of annual fruit production - increasing the number of educated producers