West Mediterranean Agricultural Research Institute (BATEM) has developed a new carnation variety and trademarked it for commercial use. The goal of the institute is to increase carnation varieties in Turkey, to lower production costs and to improve the country’s position in export markets. The trademarked carnation has been sold to a company through public tender.
The variety is named “Likya Kara” and the company which has won the public tender, will grow it and export it to Europe. The company who won the public tender is a consortium of 7 growers and is already exporting many products to Netherlands and Israel. This new variety is a distinctive fragrance and pink color which is hoped to attract many buyers from abroad.
The tender bid was won for 3,000 USD and the company has gained the right to grow and export this particular variety for 5 years.
Speaking to the press, the company vice president Omer Gundeslioglu: “We are exporting carnations to all European countries already. We are glad that we were able to add another new variety to our portfolio. I believe this new variety will attract a lot of attention abroad.
Currently, we are buying a lot of rootstocks from the Netherlands, Israel, Germany, and Italy. This will our first domestic variety and we hope more will follow in the near future.”
The agricultural engineer who was responsible for developing this new variety, Ayse Kaya noted that the breeding process has started in 2012 and this research was first of its kind in Turkey in cut flowers area. Kaya also added that they have created a gene pool with 12,000 genotypes and that they have picked this particular variety according to the market’s demands. Kaya remarked that this type of projects aims to cut down our growers’ dependency on imports for rootstock.
Source: Haberturk