Horticultural biodiversity in Turkey.

Turkey is a country that makes a bridge between Asia and Europe is known Asia Minor or Euroasia. Having a mountainous topography causes existing of thousands microclimates that have different soil and climate characters. So this creates habitat for a great number of plant and animals. In Europe roughly there are 12.500 plant species. However Turkey has 11.000 plant species of which 3.920 plant species are endemic. 75 fruit species and 60 vegetable species are cultivated in Turkey. Among grape species, Vitis vinifera is the most widespread cultivated one. Although there are more than 1.000 varieties of grapes in Turkey, only 60 varieties of them are economically grown. It has been started to improvement of horticultural plants in Turkey for a long time ago. The improvement of fruit and grape is applying clonal selection method to the suitable ones for the aim of improvement among a great number of varieties. Vegetable improvement programmes mostly depend on the combination breeding that aims the increasing of quality, quantity, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stress factors.