Major Spanish Trade Group Looks at Ways to Join Fight Against Xylella

Xylella fas­tidiosa is regarded as the top cur­rent threat to Spanish and European olive groves and increas­ing the research efforts to stop it has become one of the fore­most con­cerns of the olive oil sec­tor.

The bac­terium was first detected in Spain, the largest olive oil pro­ducer in the world, in Mallorca in November 2016. Since that moment, it has spread across the Balearic Islands, in the East of the coun­try, and was found on almond trees in the main­land in 2017. So far, there isn’t any offi­cial pos­i­tive case among olive trees on the Iberian Peninsula.

However, the ​“olive quick decline syn­drome” — the dis­ease prompted by the Xylella fas­tidiosa — has caused the death of over a mil­lion olive trees in the South of Italy and Corsica since it was detected there in 2013.

Aware of the risks of this bac­terium arriv­ing and spread­ing in the heart of the main olive oil regions in Spain, the Spanish gov­ern­ment has called a research project to study ways to stop and to respond to the dis­ease.

As a result, the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INIA) will coor­di­nate the work of 13 research cen­ters in the coun­try. But this project will not only focus on olive trees, as the bac­terium also affects other crops such as almond trees, grapevines, alfalfa and orna­men­tal plants.

Now, the Spanish Olive Oil Interprofessional asso­ci­a­tion Interprofesional del Aceite de Oliva Español is study­ing ways to join the research efforts in order to guar­an­tee that the sci­en­tific objec­tives related to the olive oil sec­tor are accom­plished.

“It is a very wide project about many dif­fer­ent kinds of crops. We are inter­ested in mak­ing sure that every­thing that may have an inci­dence in the olive groves is researched and reaches to a con­clu­sion so we can design the best praxis so we can use them in case we need it,” Teresa Pérez Millán, man­ager of the Spanish Olive Oil Interprofessional told Olive Oil Times.

The key prob­lem with Xylella fas­tidiosa at this stage is that its erad­i­ca­tion is very dif­fi­cult since there is no effec­tive treat­ment apart from the con­trol and elim­i­na­tion of the infected plants and of the insect that spreads the bac­terium.

According to the Interprofessional, the gov­ern­ment has been ​“sen­si­tive” to the sector’s demands, but a larger sci­en­tific effort is needed to develop more effec­tive strate­gies to fight and con­trol the dis­ease.

“We’ve got in touch with the INIA to co-fund research projects. Now we are in the process of eval­u­at­ing the pro­pos­als,” said Rafael Sánchez de la Puerta, head of R&D&I at the asso­ci­a­tion.

“The Spanish Olive Oil Interprofessional allo­cates 11 per­cent of its bud­get to the pro­mo­tion of inno­va­tion. This fig­ure makes us one of the orga­ni­za­tions in Europe’s agri­cul­ture and food sec­tor mak­ing the biggest effort in this area”, he added.

The research project pro­moted by the Spanish gov­ern­ment con­sists of six lines of study. The Spanish Olive Oil Interprofessional aims to sup­port them through par­al­lel and com­ple­men­tary research.

“We are set­ting out dif­fer­ent work­ing groups which will specif­i­cally focus on how the Xylella affects the olive groves, from risk analy­sis for the erad­i­ca­tion of the bac­terium in olive trees to the study of the genetic struc­ture of Xf,” Pérez Millán explained.

Other lines of works will study the guests of the bac­terium, its poten­tial dis­ease-caus­ing capac­ity on dif­fer­ent olive cul­ti­vars, the process of infec­tion of the trees and the biol­ogy and ecol­ogy of the insects spread­ing the dis­ease.

“Right now we are study­ing the bud­get that we will be able to allo­cate. These are mid-term projects, last­ing for sev­eral years, and our aim is to sup­port the devel­op­ment of those lines of work for three years,” she added.