Farmer exports local eggplant to Italy

A Turkish farmer has started receiving orders from Italy after he improved the seeds of a region-specific eggplant in the Central Anatolian province of Kırıkkale, making them three times more productive.

Hüsnü Ekiz, the head of a company engaged in seed breeding in the southern province of Antalya, produced eggplant with high fruit yield and resistant to diseases from the seeds of a region-specific eggplant native to Kırıkkale.

"The yield of the seeds, which we have worked for six years to improve, increased three times," Ekiz said, adding that now the seeds can be grown and yielded anywhere thanks to their effort.

Ekiz also pointed out that experts from Italy came and bought some seeds improved by them to test for production.

Ekiz, who went to Kırıkkale, his wife's hometown, for a holiday, wanted to grow eggplant in greenhouses and fields in Antalya as he liked the taste of it. But as Ekiz could not get the result he expected because it was not resistant to diseases, he started breeding the seeds he brought as a sample.

Emphasizing that seed breeding will prevent the problem of access to food, which is a great matter of concern for the near future, Ekiz said that farmers should be supported.

The seed company, which has been engaged in seed improvement for 60 years, headed by Ekiz, works on breeding vegetables grown in Anatolia on its 50,000-square-meter facility in Antalya's Serik district. The company has more than 14,000 different genetic materials in tomatoes and 36,000 in peppers in its gene banks.