In scope of this project draft, a multidiscipliner study would be carried out. In team work, botanists, agricultural economists and molecular biologists will take part and and the team will spend time with farmers and other interested institutions and organizations. We aim to collect the wild crops from Tuz gölü and make comprehensively morphological and molecular characterisation. Currently there are no economically viable technological means to facilitate crop production under drought or salinity in our country. Besides with, development of crop plants tolerant to these stres might be a promising approach which helps in meeting the food demands in the future. Moreover we plan to propose the domestication of new halophilic crops own to our region to create saline agriculture which will not rival in terms of resources conventional agriculture. Our search is carried out basically three steps: Firstly, The choosing and collection of candidate or targeted crops according to morphological features by field studies. Secondly making molecular characterisation via gene expression profiling or if possible to perform proteomic approaches explaining drought and salinity. Lastly, we aim to propose the domestication of new halophilic and xerophylic crops belonging to ourself gene resources. Why is this project important?Globally rising population and food deficiency: World population is expected to reach 9.2×109 people by 2050. Feeding them will require a boost in crop productivity using innovative approaches. Current agricultural production is very dependent on large amounts of inputs and water availability is a major limiting factor.-Drought and the rising regional effect over the agricultural Fields: It is clear that Turkey will be at a higher risk of experiencing meteorological droughts as well as these droughts turning into agricultural and hydrological droughts in the near future. The country’s central, southern, and south eastern regions are currently in a semi-arid climate band and are faced with the risk of desertification. The increased frequency and severity of meteorological droughts in Turkey are caused by changes in global climate patterns.The Importance of Molecular Characterisation Regards to Salinity and Drought Stress in Agricultural Respect: Characterization studies to be done from our gene resources resistant to drought and stress with together further breeding are highly preferred in terms of labor and cost compared to traditional methods. By this aim, we will try to determine the crops displaying resistance to abiotic stres, particularly drought and Salinity via gene expression profiling and if possible, proteomic approaches.Improvements of New Nutrients Peculiar to Our Gene Resources: To this end, we intend to concentrate on a few species identified as fat and vegetable, even if a large number of special gene sources belonging to the selected region.
Selçuk University targets to advance the regional crops which are resistant to drought and salinity. The aim of the project is to characterize the crops naturally growing in saline and drought areas via molecular approaches and to investigate the potential for cultivation efforts. So, farmers’ satisfaction will be assessed with appropriate statistical methods at the level of technical, economic and environmental factors, and the cultivation tendency of targeted crops suitable for research area would be analyzed. Partners may be scientists who are expertise in area of biotechnology and molecular biology (specialist on proteomic) agricultural economics as well as experts in the field of halophytic plants.
Konya is the biggest city and in the center of Turkey while has around 1/3 (38%) seed production with 125 foundations, 375 dealers, 6500 seed producers on 65.000 ha area for certified seed variety production. Selcuk University* has 95.000 students, 6 institutes, 24 Faculties, 5 high schools, 22 vocational schools, Technopark, advanced technology research and application center, 3500 academic staff and 1300 administrative staff.