Bulgarian valley turns from guns to roses

By Justyna Pawlak

KAZANLAK, Bulgaria (Reuters) - Just as the sun breaks through the mist shrouding Bulgaria's Stara Planina mountains, hundreds of villagers hustle through fields of rose bushes to pick fresh blooms still damp with morning dew.

Their tranquil valley in central Bulgaria has blossomed in recent years as European Union cash and a global boom in organic beauty products containing rose oil helped revive their centuries' old industry.

Providing a livelihood for a poor area known for decades for making AK-47 rifles, the region famous as Rose Valley is a source of the edible fragrance capsules popular in Japan and the gentle aromas in therapeutic creams sold in Europe.

It also gives Bulgaria a chance to show its beautiful side as the country struggles with rampant corruption and organized crime, and has potential to attract nature-loving tourists.

With roughly 2 tonnes of annual production, Bulgaria is the world's second largest producer of rose oil after Turkey.

But the villagers' race against the sun to pick the moist, pink flowers that produce the oil is becoming more urgent as they say climate change is making the valley hotter and drier.

"Roses like cold nights, dew in the morning and hot days in spring," said Nedko Nedkov, who runs a research institute on roses and rose oil in Kazanlak. "It puts them under stress and they react by producing oil. The more stress, the better.

"But now, there is not enough dew, sometimes there is none. The roses are becoming too thin."

Bulgaria's rose oil, with its strong aroma that sweetens perfume from brands such as Chanel and Dior, is considered by many in the cosmetics industry to be the best in the world and costs as much as 6,000 euros ($9,413) a kg.

Each spring, hundreds of villagers haul thick plastic bags filled with scrunched-up rose blooms out of the fields and onto trucks that quickly ferry the flowers to distilleries.

The roses are then dumped into vats of water and boiled for hours, with 4 tonnes of petals yielding 1 kg of precious oil. In the 1980s and 90s, when the climate was cooler and the roses more moist, the same yield needed closer to 2.8 tonnes, said Nedkov.

"These bushes are our children. We put a lot of hope into them," said Aiten Topalova, 38, who owns a small field near Kazanlak, the capital of the area known as Rose Valley.

A warm breeze wafted the aroma of roses and chamomile from nearby fields as she pulled blooms out of the prickly bushes shortly after dawn.

ROSE PILLOWS

While roses are still wilting in water vats, exuding an odor that becomes pungent before turning sweet again in the distilling process, oil buyers are already striking deals.