Ecologically, Eastern Black Sea region has the richest biodiversity, and contains the highest endemic plant and animal varieties of natural habitat in Turkey. However, since the 1940s the extremely hastily introducing of tea plants and gradually becoming the dominant source of agricultural income in the region, causing the tea to become the agriculturally single monoculture product plus insufficient monitoring created an imbalance in the ecosystem and it?s slowly destroying the local habitat each passing day.

It may only be possible to slow down the present day detrimental tea agriculture by reintroducing and redeveloping the planting of endemic fruit trees in the region. For centuries endemic fruit trees have adapted themselves to become part of the natural ecosystem of the region. These trees have become resistant to the adverse global climatic variations and have adapted themselves to benefit the local environment. Endemic trees, naturally have become part of the local agrodiversity, adapting and adding to the local cuisine, and the practical lifestyle of the region, thus have amalgamated to enrich and become part of the cultural heritage.
Local people have a deep knowledge and sense of nature and like to live harmoniously with nature. At the same time, while cutting down fruit trees and turning these fields into tea plantations in order to have a cash crop such as tea, they have contributed to the slow destruction and extinction of the endemic fruit trees which protect the soil and a traditional life style. The reintroduction, replanting and protection of the endemic fruit trees within the tea plantations and among tea plants in the fields are essentially dependent on sustainability and on the financial benefit that these trees would provide to the local population.
The aim of this project is to propose to facilitate in repairing the harmful practices of tea growing in the Eastern Black Sea region, which has been causing damage and is depleting the local ecosystem, while achieve an awareness about the sustainability of the completely naturally suitable endemic fruit trees, their protection and propagation and to bring forth proposals that contribute to the agriculture of the region.
This project is in accordance with SGP?s priorities of protecting the traditional production areas towards agricultural biodiversity and ecology with the participation of the local peoples with creative agricultural applications.