Azerbaijan Appeals to China for Revival of Sericulture

Azerbaijan, once the leader of the Soviet Union on the quality of silkworm cocoons, will buy 1.6 million saplings of mulberry from China, the Ministry of Agriculture stated with reference to the Deputy Minister Ilham Guliyev, who met with the delegation of the Department of Agriculture of China's Jiangsu province. From China and Iran Azerbaijan imported eggs of this insect that were matured and distributed free of charge to cocoon producers.

Recall, according to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1960-70-ies the country annually produced about 7,800 tons of raw silk. After the collapse of the USSR the industry came to desolation, as evidenced by the numbers - 57 tons produced in 2000, 10 tons in 2014 and only 236 kg in 2015. The reason is that the Sheki silk factory is idle and the raw material producer is not interested in the business; the price of 1 kg of cocoon was at AZN 3 until this year and increased to AZN 8 in 2016.

There is another difficulty - the majority of mulberry plantations are destroyed, and now to revive the volume we should wait up to 4 years - the time of the first harvest.

Experts believe the industry can still be competitive and provide the employment of up to 20 thousand people, including purveyors. The more so, growing a single party of cocoon takes about 40 days.  --17D-