Georgia’s Geonuts Company has established the first 6 ha avocado farm in Lanchkhuti municipality. Producers will harvest the first fruits as early as next year, but the first Georgian avocado farm will enter full production only in four to five years.
The Geonuts Company purchased avocado seedlings from the Italian nursery Vivai Zanzi with the assistance of Green Solutions, the official representative of Zanzi in Georgia. Seedlings and avocado varieties were selected taking into account the climatic conditions of Georgia.
East-fruit.com quoted Andriy Yarmak, economist at the Investment Centre of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN as saying: “Avocados is the fastest growing position in the world fruit and vegetable export, outstripping even the best-sellers of recent years like blueberries, cherries, mangoes or durian in terms of foreign trade growth. The global trade in avocados increases by $ 780 million average per year! Therefore, the pioneers of avocado cultivation, of course, fall into a good growing trend, although there are risks – avocados were not grown commercially in Georgia before.”
Zviad Bobokashvili, Head of the Fruit Crops Research Department of the Research Center of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, spoke about the prospects of avocado production in Georgia. He noted that attempts to grow avocados in Georgia, in Adjara and Abkhazia regions were already made in the 1940-1950s, but they turned out to be not successful, since the varieties were not frost-resistant, and the climate in winter was much harsher in the middle of the 20th century in Georgia.