U.S. Ambassador Elisabeth Millard and WorldVeg Central Asia and the Caucasus Regional Coordinator Ravza Mavlyanova attended an opening ceremony for a new commercial greenhouse in Ghayrat village near Qurghonteppa, Tajikistan on 15 February 2017. Several key stakeholders also attended the event, including Hidirzoda Makhfirat Umar, Deputy Governor of Khatlon Province.

For several years, WorldVeg has been working on the design, construction, and operation of improved greenhouse models in Khatlon. The greenhouses allow farmers to produce nutritious vegetables outside of the peak production season, when demand and prices are higher. Greenhouses also are used to produce high quality, disease-free seedlings early in the spring, which are then sold to other farmers for field production and in backyard garden plots.

The design of the new 10 x 50 m commercial greenhouse will increase the scale at which seedlings can be produced.  Made with more durable construction materials, the greenhouse is significantly larger than previous models and is expected to operate year-round, producing about 200,000 seedlings per year.  The USAID Feed the Future Tajikistan Nutrition-Sensitive Vegetable Technologies Project supported the design and construction of the greenhouse as a public-private partnership with a local farmer.