Turkey’s leading food company, Ülker followed up the harvest of their first “Aliağa Biscuit Wheat” in July 2020 by rolling up its sleeves to develop new biscuit wheat types. Ülker will implement a 5+5-year “Biscuit Wheat Development Program” prepared together with the Bahri Dağdaş International Agricultural Research Institute with the goal of developing new varieties of biscuit wheat to add to the country’s agricultural product portfolio.

Aliağa Biscuit Wheat is a new type of wheat Ülker has developed with the Bahri Dağdaş International Agricultural Research Institute as part of its “Biscuit Wheat Development Program” that is national, resistant to drought, disease and climate change, highly efficient and high quality. Ülker will continue to work with the Institute to develop new varieties of biscuit wheat.

Underlining that they are an important raw material purchaser in Turkey, Ülker’s CEO Mete Buyurgan said, “One of our priorities for maintaining the continuity of our operations and the consistency of our products’ quality is to sustainably supply the agricultural products we need. We are developing projects and supporting research on sustainable agriculture and raw material supply. Following the success of the Aliağa Biscuit Wheat Project we conducted with the Bahri Dağdaş International Agricultural Research Institute, we are now launching the Biscuit Wheat Development Program with the same partner to develop new varieties of biscuit wheat”.

Sustainable production

Buyurgan said that they aim to conduct R&D activities to produce locally grown, national seeds that will help combat drought, be sustainably produced, resist disease and pests, and increase efficiency and quality. He gave the following information on the program: “This will allow biscuit wheat to be planted in a wider geography, thus ensuring the continuity of biscuit wheat production. We believe that this program will contribute to both the agricultural sector and the country’s economy by providing local seeds suitable for different terrain and climates, which will also increase the harvest and bring more income to farmers.”
Buyurgan remarked that Aliağa Biscuit Wheat was first planted on 700 acres of land in Konya and Ankara in November 2019, with the first harvest in July 2020. He said: “With this harvest, we achieved our goal of producing about 300 tons of seeds which were planted in Konya, Ankara, Kırıkkale, Yozgat and Kırşehir in November 2020. We are closely following the crop growth process. In the coming period, we plan to increase the production and cultivation area through a contractual planting system to make Aliağa Wheat ready to be used not only by Ülker, but also by other stakeholders in the biscuit industry. By 2023, our goal is to supply more than half of our biscuit wheat needs with Aliağa Wheat”.

“It is critical for the agricultural sector”

Dr. Fatih Özdemir, Director of Bahri Dağdaş International Agricultural Research Institute, who conducted the Biscuit Wheat Development Program together with Ülker, shared the following information: “We have brought the new Aliağa biscuit wheat variety to this fertile land, the homeland of wheat, and we are happy to start working on new varieties. The long-term effort we put into the development of Aliağa Biscuit Wheat helped produce the first locally grown, national biscuit wheat in Turkey. With the new “Biscuit Wheat Development Program”, we will obtain locally-bred seeds that can grow in different climates and terrain. As part of the project, we will observe the farming results of nearly 2,000 varieties of candidate wheats from the 2020-2021 planting period to identify those whose performances stand out, and start seed improvement work on these varieties. Over the next 5 years, we will conduct many technical studies such as planting the seeds in different climates – in wet and dry land – to develop the most suitable wheat species, and for the wheat variety that shows the best results, we will apply to the Directorate of Seed Registration and Certification, just like with Aliağa”.