July 18 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria expects to harvest over 6 million tonnes of wheat in 2022, agriculture minister Ivan Ivanov said, confirming earlier estimates of average volumes close to those recorded in 2021 crop year.
The crop will be reaped from over 1.2 million hectares put to wheat which translates into an average yield of slightly more than 5 tonnes per hectare, Ivanov said in a press release on Sunday.
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A little over 3.5 million tonnes of wheat has been collected so far, with over 50% of sowings harvested, the minister added.
In 2021, Bulgaria had a bumper crop year, harvesting some 7.16 million tonnes of wheat, or 52% more than in 2020. Of those, around 5.2 million tonnes were exported, the ministry said last month. In 2020, Bulgaria harvested 4.63 million tonnes of wheat from 1.18 million ha sown, down from 6.16 million tonnes gathered in 2019, the agriculture ministry said last year.
The country has imported 6,000 tonnes of wheat and 1,300 tonnes of barley from Ukraine so far this year, Ivanov said. He reiterated that imports of Ukrainian grain, which have been freed from customs duty and phytosanitary checks at the decision of the European Commission, will be put to laboratory tests in Bulgaria to ensure they meet EU standards.
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