In mid-June 2022, EastFruit, an information and analytics platform for the growth of the horticulture business, wrote about record volumes of watermelon exports from Uzbekistan in the first month of watermelon export season.  The country reportedly exported over 28,000 tons of watermelons in the first month, which was a record volume for the same period in at least the last five years.

Watermelon exports from Uzbekistan kept breaking records, and the country exported another 35,000 tons over the past two weeks, i.e. from mid-June to the end of June, EastFruit analysts reported on July 1, 2022.

According to preliminary data by the Customs Committee of Uzbekistan, from May 16 to June 30, 2022, Uzbekistan exported 63,400 tons of watermelons, which is 3.1 times more than in the same period last year.

EastFruit notes that considering that Uzbekistan’s watermelon exports for the same period in 2018-2020 did not exceed 3,000 tons in physical terms, the export volume for one-and-a-half months since the beginning of the season exceeded the volumes in 2018-2020 more than 20 times!

At the same time, about 99% of the total volume was shipped to the markets of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) countries and about 1.5% of the export volume was sent to the markets of four countries: Tajikistan – 700 tons, Mongolia – 155 tons, Ukraine – 42 tons and Latvia – 18 tons, according to EastFruit.