With the spread of health-conscious nutrition, the popularity of spinach is also increasing in our country

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In our country, spinach is grown on about 541 hectares, making it one of the small crops among field crops. Large-scale cultivation is mainly for industrial processing purposes, mainly serving the production of quick-frozen products (making natural and creamy purees). Fresh market spinach is typically grown on smaller farms in unheated foil tents. The latter is picked by hand, while machine cutting is used for industrial use the farmers.

Spinach is grown in many countries and in different climatic conditions, it is one of the most popular and widespread vegetables in the world

Its cultivation is economical, as it can be sown in early spring due to its low heat requirement, and it begins to produce early, so it is considered the first “primary” vegetable in the open field. The largest producer of spinach in the world – far ahead of the others – is China, with 30.6 million tons, big spinach growers also include the United States (382,000 tons), Turkey (230,000 tons), Japan (208,000 tons) and Indonesia (170,000 According to Eurostat data, the spinach harvest in the European Union was 674,000 tons in 2022. According to the Central Statistics Office, farmers harvested 12,100 tons in 2022, which was 32 percent more than in 2017-2021. This data also clearly shows that the demand for spinach in our country is also increasing with a more health-conscious diet and the versatile use of spinach.

Due to its outstanding protein and mineral content, spinach is one of the vegetables with the highest nutritional value

Although the high iron content of spinach is the most popular, it is also a significant source of manganese, zinc, copper, potassium and calcium. Among the vitamins, it mainly contains a significant amount of vitamins A, C and K, and the content of vitamins B2, B6 and E is also worth mentioning. Spinach has become an essential part of modern nutrition, which is also helped by the increasingly diverse ways of preparing it. In addition to cooking vegetables, many dishes can be prepared from it raw and cooked: raw green salads and vegetable smoothies, it can be used to make, for example, sauces, fillings, pasta dishes, steamed vegetable dishes, it can be added to meatloaf and various pastas.

NAK