Apulian Authorities Agree on Funding for Xylella Strategy Ahead of Critical Spring Season

Authorities in the south­ern Italian region of Puglia have announced a phy­tosan­i­tary strat­egy to curb the spread of the deadly Xylella fas­tidiosa bac­terium for 2023 and 2024.

The announce­ment marks the first time regional author­i­ties have approved a multi-year plan since Xylella fas­tidiosa started to spread in Italy in 2013.

Apulian author­i­ties have bud­geted €7.7 mil­lion for the strat­egy, which con­firms the loca­tion and num­ber of infected red zones, where past Xylella fas­tidiosa out­breaks are con­stantly mon­i­tored.

One of the new plan’s crit­i­cal com­po­nents is improv­ing mon­i­tor­ing, which has resulted in the early detec­tion of infec­tions.

“Monitoring is cru­cial in the pre­ven­tion and the fight against the bac­terium,” Donato Pentassuglia, Puglia’s regional sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture, told Olive Oil Times.

“The mon­i­tor­ing num­bers, con­stantly updated through our ded­i­cated regional por­tal, show a sig­nif­i­cant and timely con­trol through plant analy­sis con­ducted not by the visual approach but by deploy­ing pre­cise sta­tis­ti­cal sam­pling tech­niques and advanced mol­e­c­u­lar tests.” 

Local experts rou­tinely take seven to 10 sam­ples from olive trees and veg­e­ta­tion in at-risk areas for each hectare of farm­land. Sampling can be more exten­sive if the risk is con­sid­ered greater, such as in the prox­im­ity of recently dis­cov­ered out­breaks.

Sampling focuses on the dozens of species sus­cep­ti­ble to Xylella fas­tidiosa bac­te­ria. 

“The more we can detect [the infec­tion] early, make early diag­noses and quickly apply con­tain­ment mea­sures on infected plants and new out­breaks, extin­guish­ing out­breaks by culling, the more we reduce the advance of the olive dis­ease,” Pentassuglia said.

This kind of mon­i­tor­ing allows for estab­lish­ing the bound­aries of the infected areas, where spe­cial con­tain­ment pro­to­cols are applied.

As man­dated by European Union reg­u­la­tions, such pro­to­cols include destroy­ing all infected trees and all sur­round­ing veg­e­ta­tion in a 50 meters radius.

Within such a radius, the new plan would typ­i­cally require the destruc­tion of dozens of cen­turies-old trees in the Monumental Olive Tree Valley, even if not infected. However, the E.U. has made an excep­tion to spare the cul­tur­ally and his­tor­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant trees. 

The Apulian Administrative Tribunal (TAR) recently took this idea fur­ther and said it might also spare infected trees on pri­vately-owned land in the val­ley from destruc­tion.

According to a local cit­i­zens’ com­mit­tee, which sup­ported the landowner in her legal action, the cur­rent strate­gies to pre­vent the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa have resulted in deser­ti­fi­ca­tion ​“with immea­sur­able dam­ages to the econ­omy, tourism, soci­ety and envi­ron­ment.”

Gennaro Sicolo, pres­i­dent of CIA Puglia, an agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tion, told Olive Oil Times that most farm­ers and landown­ers affected by Xylella fas­tidiosa had accepted the deploy­ment of the destruc­tion pro­to­cols. Some have even pro­ceeded to apply them on their own.

“Luckily, only a few pre­ferred to go to court to block erad­i­ca­tion,” he said. ​“The only result they get is to help Xylella fas­tidiosa spread fur­ther.”

The new bien­nial regional Xylella fas­tidiosa con­tain­ment plan has been adopted well ahead of the spring when the insects respon­si­ble for spread­ing the bac­te­ria begin to pro­lif­er­ate.

According to the local gov­ern­ment, this tim­ing will allow author­i­ties to deploy all the con­tain­ment mea­sures as the new sea­son approaches. Farmers agree.

“With the new plan, this year there will be enough time to make all stake­hold­ers par­tic­i­pate in the new con­tain­ment strate­gies, which also means bet­ter action plan­ning,” Sicolo said.

Pentassuglia, the regional sec­re­tary to agri­cul­ture, empha­sized that beyond mon­i­tor­ing the infec­tion, the local gov­ern­ment has sus­tained farms affected by the epi­demic and sup­ported the olive farm­ing regen­er­a­tion by plant­ing resilient cul­ti­vars.

However, mem­bers of CIA Puglia believe that more can be done. ​“In the last few years, local insti­tu­tions have accel­er­ated the con­tain­ment actions, the mon­i­tor­ing oper­a­tions and the erad­i­ca­tion [of the infected trees] sig­nif­i­cantly,” Sicolo said. ​“But there is a need for quicker and more syn­er­gic action.”

“That is why we pro­posed the appoint­ment of a ded­i­cated emer­gency man­ager with full pow­ers, extra­or­di­nary resources and means, able to enact erad­i­ca­tions in just a few weeks after an out­break is reported,” he added. ​“Xylella fas­tidiosa is no less an emer­gency than Covid-19 has been and should be treated as such.”

Sicolo empha­sized how the most sig­nif­i­cant objec­tive now for farm­ers and offi­cials is pre­vent­ing the spread of the bac­te­ria far­ther north, which would endan­ger hun­dreds of thou­sands of olive groves. ​“Those are the areas of the excel­lency of Apulian olive oil pro­duc­tion,” he said.

Among the mea­sures enacted through­out the whole region is the manda­tory removal of veg­e­ta­tion known to serve as habi­tats for the vec­tor insect pop­u­la­tions.

“We won­der if extra­or­di­nary funds should be trans­ferred to farm­ers to help them exe­cute these best prac­tices,” Sicolo said. ​“We also won­der if the pub­lic enti­ties that man­age roads, chan­nels, and rail­ways have always cor­rectly exe­cuted the con­tain­ment actions pro­vided by the reg­u­la­tions against the bac­te­ria.”

The future of the Apulian olive tree her­itage remains uncer­tain. ​“Currently, there is no cure for Xylella fas­tidiosa, which the European Food Safety Authority has con­firmed based on sci­en­tific evi­dence,” Pentassuglia said.

“We can, how­ever, pre­vent, mon­i­tor, and act promptly to reduce and block the spread through erad­i­cat­ing dis­eased plants,” he added. ​“And we can, as we are pro­ceed­ing, invest in con­stant and assid­u­ous sci­en­tific research, in field tri­als that will rep­re­sent… new oppor­tu­ni­ties for rebirth, also through cul­tural diver­si­fi­ca­tion.”

The social, his­tor­i­cal and emo­tional link between locals and olive trees has tested the resilience of more than one gen­er­a­tion of Apulian cit­i­zens since the first out­breaks.

“The regional action and our com­mit­ment are con­stant to give farm­ers and busi­nesses the tools to pre­serve the olive-grow­ing her­itage and a strate­gic econ­omy for Puglia,” Pentassuglia con­cluded. ​“And above all, to cre­ate the con­di­tions for a real revi­tal­iza­tion in the medium-long term of our extra­or­di­nary ter­ri­tory.”