IRNA � An official of Ministry of Agriculture said on Thursday that Iran exports about $570m of medicinal plants each year.

Hossein Zeinali told IRNA that the production of medicinal plants reaches 400 million tons a years that provides jobs for about two million people.

Zeinali said that medicinal plants are being grown in about 206,000 hectares, adding that they mostly include saffron, caraway, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, Persian shallot, and roses.

He also said that more than $400 million dollars of the revenue comes from exports of saffron from Razavi Khorasan, northeastern Iran.

He added that Iran is number one in export of saffron, roses, asafoetida, galbanum, astragalus, tragacanth, and caraway.

Zeinali said that the products are mainly exported to Afghanistan, Spain, Emirates, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and the United States.

There are 11 factories in Iran to process liquorice. Due to drought, Iran imported 100,000 tons of liquorice from Azerbaijan and exported the processed product to Germany last year.