February 15 2006, 17:56

Water-melon production can increase significantly in Crimea in 2006

According to the information provided by the Agricultural Marketing Project, water-melon production is expected to increase in Crimea this year. Crimea attracts crowds of tourists in summertime; it is one of the main water-melon sales markets for Kherson farmers, who are the recognized leaders of water-melon growing.

It is hard to explain why Crimean farmers have not grown lots of water-melons before; even wholesale prices were always too high in this region. To the experts' opinion, the flavor of Crimean water-melons leaves even Kherson produce far behind. But, in recent years Crimea occupied only 11th place on the volumes of water-melon production in Ukraine, the region is lagging behind even the "cool" Kyrovograd and Poltava oblasts.

So, Crimean farmers had to consider the perspective crop of water melon, maybe due to the mentioned factors, and also due to the timely price information in the different regions of Ukraine, publicly disseminated by "Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" weekly journal. The analysts can not evaluate definitely the production growth, but 20-30% increase is quite possible.