Combined Efforts and Encouraging Outcomes at International Seminar on Xylella Fastidiosa

The International Olive Council (IOC) and the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies CIHEAM orga­nized an inter­na­tional sem­i­nar on Xylella fas­tidiosa from 28 to 30 November at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute in Bari, with the aim to pro­vide the most updated infor­ma­tion on the dis­ease which is affect­ing the olive trees in the south­ern part of Apulia.

Researchers and experts from Italian and inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions exam­ined the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion to develop com­mon mea­sures that can be adopted.

In addi­tion to research, leg­is­la­tion and instru­ments avail­able to mon­i­tor the bac­te­ria, the top­ics cov­ered by speak­ers con­cerned the tests car­ried out on the bac­terium and its vec­tor, and the strate­gies and agri­cul­tural mea­sures to com­bat the rapid decline syn­drome in affected olive trees.
See Also:Complete Coverage of the Xylella Fastidiosa Outbreak
The experts also took part in a field visit and, dur­ing the final round-table ses­sion, high­lighted the need to strengthen sci­en­tific, tech­ni­cal and polit­i­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion among coun­tries.

There are broad research efforts under­way that are pro­duc­ing encour­ag­ing results against the dis­ease. Among the many experts, Antonia Carlucci from the University of Foggia, made men­tion of a strat­egy to con­tain organ­i­cally the rapid des­ic­ca­tion of affected olive trees.

The Director of the Fruit Tree Research Unit of The Council for Agricultural Research and Economics of Caserta CREA-FRC, Marco Scortichini, gave a speech about pre­lim­i­nary results of field tri­als con­ducted in Veglie, in the province of Lecce.

“During 2015, a total of 40 olive trees of Cellina di Nardò and Ogliarola vari­eties, were cho­sen to test the field effi­cacy of a 4 per­cent zinc plus 2 per­cent cop­per com­pound, patented in Israel, to pos­si­bly con­trol the effects of Xylella fas­tidiosa,” he explained dur­ing the con­fer­ence. ​“In the orchard, the pres­ence of the pathogen was ascer­tained by means of mol­e­c­u­lar diag­nos­tic tech­niques.”

The researcher said half of the trees were not treated and served as con­trol plants, while a total of six spray treat­ments were applied to the canopy of the trees from early April to October. During sum­mer, no treat­ment was applied.

“For each tree, the total num­ber of new shoots that wilted dur­ing the veg­e­ta­tive sea­son were counted. Programs were employed to test the sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance of the treat­ment and a mol­e­c­u­lar test was set up to pre­cisely point out which part of the leaf and twig should be taken to reli­ably detect the pres­ence of Xf within the tree,” Scortichini clar­i­fied.

The untreated trees showed an increas­ing inci­dence of the dis­ease, with the pres­ence of new wilt­ing shoots and branches, while in all the treated trees the occur­rence of dis­ease symp­toms such as new wilt­ing shoots, was sig­nif­i­cantly decreased.

This year, in addi­tion to the fur­ther record­ing of the inci­dence of the dis­ease, the quan­ti­ta­tive real-time PCR tech­nique will be applied to deter­mine the rate of reduc­tion of Xylella fas­tidiosa within the canopy of trees, ​“offi­cially ascer­tained by the regional phy­tosan­i­tary ser­vice for the pres­ence of the pathogen before the start­ing of the trial,” the researcher pointed out.

At the end of the sem­i­nar, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the International Olive Council, Abdellatif Ghedira, indi­cated that Xylella fas­tidiosa is high on the agenda of the orga­ni­za­tion and recalled its role as an inter­na­tional cen­ter for doc­u­men­ta­tion and infor­ma­tion on the sec­tor.

Ghedira also announced the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the IOC in the ​“XF-ACTORS” project, funded by the EU under the pro­gram Horizon 2020, which aims to estab­lish a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary research pro­gram to answer the urgent need to improve pre­ven­tion, early detec­tion and con­trol of Xylella fas­tidiosa.

• IOC


• CIHEAM