Zugdidi

a city (since 1918) in the Georgian SSR. Located in the Colchis lowlands, 30 km from the Black Sea on the Black Sea Highway and the road to Svaneti (Mestia). Railroad station on a branch of the Sukhumi-Samtredia line. Population, 40,000 (1970). Industry includes the Inguri Cellulose and Paper Mill, a winery, an oil-extraction plant, a cannery, a silkworm farm, and tea, tea-pressing, silk-weaving, and furniture factories. The city has a medical school and branches of the All-Union Research Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops, the Tbilisi Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR, and a polytechnic institute. Zugdidi has a museum of history and ethnology and a drama theater.