Bulgaria, once the foodbasket of communist eastern Europe, is trying to transform its farming practices to allow it to find a big market for its fruit, wine and cereals in the enlarged European Union.

Sofia hopes to join the bloc in 2007 but has already adapted 98 percent of its agriculture legislation to meet EU demands after spotting a way to boost the country's lagging economic development.

"We do not want to be the poor cousin who comes knocking on the door, we want to walk in armed with vast agricultural potential and diversity," said Deputy Agriculture Minister Meglena Plougchieva.

"Our strategic product will be our cereals," she said, adding that the country has 1.1 to 1.3 million hectares of wheatfields under cultivation, depending on the year.

Fruit and vegetables, wine, rose oil and tobacco are Bulgaria's other agricultural strong points. Over recent years it has added to that cows, goats and buffalo that are raised in the mountains and whose milk is used to make a type of mozzarella cheese.

But the country's farming sector is still struggling to rebuild itself after it fell into decline on the fall of the Iron Curtain after 1989.

The country was a leader in producing food for other communist states in the region, but that came to an end in 1990 when its farming cooperatives were dissolved and a long and not always successful process of land restitution began.

Farmlands were divided up into roughly 20 million small-holdings that were parcelled out to about 2.5 million farmers, but large tracts of the country's 5.5 million hectares of arable land lie barren.

Agriculture exports totalled 2.4 billion dollars (1.9 billion euros) in 1989, but by 2000 their value had fallen to 491 million dollars before climbing to 716 million dollars in 2002.

At the moment the sector accounts for 13 percent of the country's gross domestic product and employs 26 percent of its labour force.

It remains the one area where exports still outnumber imports in Bulgaria, but the country is under no illusion that it will be an easy task to rebuild it to its former capacity, particularly for a stricter EU market.

A report by the United Nations Development Programme said farming remained largely a family affair in Bulgaria. It is not market-oriented, the quality of the produce was lower than in the EU and there is not enough money to buy sophisticated farming machinery.

The EU's latest report on Bulgaria notes that the country still "has a lot of work to do" to meet EU standards of vetinary control and hygiene.

The country has 20 dairies, 12 abattoirs, four meat processing factories and four for fish that have permission to export their produce to the European Union, Plougchieva said.

Sofia has asked Brussels to allow it transition periods of at least three years after EU accession to bring its milk and wine production procedures up to standard.

At the end of 2003 barely 12 percent of the country's unpasteurised milk met EU standards.

As for wine, Sofia wants to increase its vinelands by three percent after joining the EU, while there is moratorium imposed by Brussels on creating new vignards before 2010.

Wine has long been produced in Bulgaria and the country offers its own specialities, but here too it has suffered a decline.

In 1990 it had 190,000 hectares in good condition but today many of these have been exhausted and only 145,230 hectares remain, some of them in a poor state.

Sofia also wants the EU to recognise specific names of origin for some 20 Bulgarian agriculture products, among them rose oil, certain wines, its natural yoghurt, cheeses and sausages.

The country is pushing to close the agriculture chapter of its accession talks by October.