CHEBOKSARY, April 18. /TASS/. Hop farms in Russia requires about 140 hop pickers to harvest this crop, deputy prime minister of the Chuvash Republic Sergey Artamonov told Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev during his business visit to Chuvashia.

"To support the country, about 140 [hop] harvesters are needed [on the basis of] 4,000 hectares," Artamonov said.

A prototype of the hop harvester developed by a company in the republic was upgraded and reworked "to meet the business needs," Rector of the Chuvash State Agricultural University Andrey Makushev noted. Lack of special machinery and equipment manufacturing in Russia for hop growing restrains development of the industry. One more problem is lack of required volumes of pure grade hops.