The project was launched under the coordination of Chef Ebru Baybara Demir, with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Ministry of Family and Social Services, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). As part of the preliminary research, 11 archived wheat varieties were reviewed, and it was determined that five of these were still being cultivated on a limited scale using traditional methods. Among them, Sorgül—one of the oldest durum wheat varieties—was selected for large-scale reproduction.
In 2017, two tons of Sorgül wheat collected from the region were sown on 102 decares of land owned by two volunteer farmers. The cultivation involved 35 Turkish women and 35 Syrian refugee women under temporary protection who had received project training. The entire process relied solely on traditional agricultural practices, without the use of pesticides or additional irrigation. The first harvest in 2018 yielded 20 tons of wheat. In the following planting season, the number of volunteer landowners increased to six, and the harvested 20 tons of Sorgül were replanted as seed stock. Over the years, reproduction continued steadily, and today Sorgül is being cultivated across 36,000 decares of land by 360 women farmers.
The multiplication of Sorgül is of critical importance for the future of food security. As a native product of Anatolian soil, Sorgül is cultivated without chemical inputs or supplementary irrigation and through traditional methods. Thanks to these characteristics, it has demonstrated strong resilience to the impacts of climate change in recent years, including heavy rainfall and drought.
During this process, trial cultivation was also carried out in the Konya Plain—widely known as Türkiye’s grain basin—to address severe drought conditions, and the results proved successful. While Sorgül continues to be expanded as a seed crop, a portion of the harvest is being transformed into value-added products. Today, Sorgül wheat is used to produce premium-priced flour in the region. Pasta, cookies, and other products made from Sorgül flour were introduced to the market for the first time through the e-commerce platform of the Topraktan Tabağa Cooperative.
Sorgül also represents the very first project of the Topraktan Tabağa Agricultural Development Cooperative, marking a foundational step toward sustainable, local, and climate-resilient agriculture.