November 24 (SeeNews) - Moldova harvested 630,000 tonnes of grapes this year compared to some 600,000 tonnes cropped in 2008, as favourable weather conditions resulted in high grape quality, official sources said on Tuesday.
"The quality of the grapes we cropped this year is one of the highest in the last ten years thanks to favourable weather conditions," a government official who declined to be named told SeeNews.
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"Despite a severe crisis in the country’s wine industry, local wineries have acquired the main part of this year’s grape crop and have started to process it," the official added.
He added that the country has exported around 20,000 tonnes of grape so far this year mainly to neighbouring Romania and Ukraine and to Belarus. The high quality of grape allowed a significant increase in exports this year, the official said but provided no comparative figures.
Moldova had 156,000 hectares under vineyards this year and recorded an average yield of around 4.0 tonnes per hectare, the official added.
In 2008, the country had 141,800 hectares of vineyards and the yield stood at some 4.0 tonnes per hectare, Moldova's government agency for grape and wine production, Moldova-Vin, said last year.
Some 85% of Moldova's vineyards are wine grape varieties.
Wine production is the ex-Soviet country's main industrial sector. Some 25% of Moldova's export revenue comes from the sales of wine and spirits.
The value of Moldova's exports of wine and spirits fell by 27% on the year to $58 million (39 million euro) in the first five months of 2009, the latest available official figures indicated.
($=0.6699 euro)