Date Palm

The Date Palm Phoenix dactylifera is a palm, extensively cultivated for its edible fruit. Due to its long history of cultivation for fruit, its exact native distribution is unknown, but the date palm probably originated somewhere in the desert oases of north Africa, and perhaps also southwest Asia. It is a medium-sized tree, 15-25 m tall, often clumped with several trunks from a single root system, but also often growing singly. The leaves are pinnate, up to 3 m long, with spines on the petiole and about 150 leaflets; the leaflets are 30 cm long and 2 cm broad.

Production

World production of dates was approximately 6.7 Mio tonnes in 2004 (FAO statistics http://apps.fao.org/faostat/form?collection=Production.Crops.Primary&Domain=Production&servlet=1&hasbulk=0&version=ext&language=EN). The major producers are:

Related Topics:
Tonne - 2004 - FAO

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• Egypt: 1,100,000 t (16.2% of world production)
• Iran: 880,000 t (13.0%)
• Saudi Arabia: 830,000 t (12.3%)
• United Arab Emirates: 760,000 t (11.2%)
• Pakistan: 650,000 t (9.6%)
• Algeria: 450,000 t (6.6%)
• Sudan: 330,000 t
• Oman: 240,000 t
• Libya: 140,000 t
• Others: 1,140,000 t
• Iraq used to be a major producer of dates but in recent years production and exports have been curtailed.

The First International Date Conference was held in Tripoli, Libya in 1959, and led to the development of a special program under the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations to promote the commercial utilisation of substandard or physically defective dates.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~