Officials in Puglia Approve New Plan to Stem Spread of Xylella Fastidiosa

The regional gov­ern­ment of Puglia has approved its new 2022 plan to fight the spread of the deadly olive tree pathogen Xylella fas­tidiosa.

The plan focuses on a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the mon­i­tor­ing of the dis­ease. More than 300,000 trees cov­er­ing 34,000 hectares will be exam­ined in the next few months.

Local offi­cials said the con­stant mon­i­tor­ing of the bac­te­ria cou­pled with a long list of mea­sures to pre­vent out­breaks and mit­i­gate infec­tions has already allowed them to iden­tify sev­eral areas that can resume nor­mal olive farm­ing activ­i­ties.

Among these is Canosa, located in north­west­ern Puglia, one of Italy’s most sig­nif­i­cant olive oil-pro­duc­ing loca­tions. An out­break was iden­ti­fied in the comune one year ago. However, regional author­i­ties said the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa had been stopped, lead­ing the author­i­ties to declare the area Xylella-free.

The Canosa strat­egy involved the lab­o­ra­tory exam­i­na­tion of almost 10,000 sam­ples in the out­break area and allowed local offi­cials to con­firm that the ini­tial out­break had been an iso­lated inci­dent.

Under the new plan, the author­i­ties still con­sider the Salento region, in the mid-south­ern part of Puglia, to be infected. The Monopoli, Polignano and Alberobello munic­i­pal­i­ties also adopted the same pro­to­cols, estab­lish­ing a 2.5‑kilometer buffer area that bor­ders infec­tion red zones.

More infor­ma­tion to the farm­ers and com­pen­sa­tion for their pre­ven­tive works aimed at lim­it­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties for the Xylella insect vec­tors to spread the bac­te­ria are also included in the new plan.

As they have in pre­vi­ous years, local offi­cials said that farm­ers could do a few things to sig­nif­i­cantly limit the breed­ing and repro­duc­tion of insect vec­tors of the dis­ease, such as the spit­tle­bug.

“With the incom­ing spring, we need to reit­er­ate how essen­tial the sur­face pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions such as plow­ing, milling, har­row­ing and shred­ding are to stop the younger gen­er­a­tions of the insects and, as a con­se­quence, the whole pop­u­la­tion of the spit­tle­bug,” said Donato Pentassuglia, the regional agri­cul­tural sec­re­tary.

The local branch of the farm­ing asso­ci­a­tion Coldiretti said pub­lic and pri­vate enti­ties need to exe­cute these oper­a­tions on unused farm­land, pub­lic green areas, road­sides, canals and other sur­faces.

However, Savino Muraglia, pres­i­dent of Coldiretti Puglia, said farm­ers should be reim­bursed for their expenses and efforts in curb­ing the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa.

“Just as pub­lic bod­ies ben­e­fit from fund­ing for manda­tory activ­i­ties, the agri­cul­tural entre­pre­neurs, even more, are due reim­burse­ments to sup­port phy­tosan­i­tary pre­ven­tion prac­tices,” Muraglia said.

The Regional Authority for Forests and Waters and the Carabinieri Forestal divi­sion will con­duct mas­sive mon­i­tor­ing oper­a­tions. To that end, satel­lite imag­ing, drones and detec­tion dogs will all be used.

The regional plan referred explic­itly to projects funded by the national author­i­ties, such as Redox, an effort to build new tech­no­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture for large-scale and con­stant pre­ven­tion oper­a­tions.

Due to aer­ial sur­vey and hyper­spec­tral sen­sors mounted on aer­ial drones, the goal of the Redox project is to iden­tify infected olive trees before they show the symp­toms of infec­tion, with mon­i­tor­ing occur­ring over large areas.

“We are reach­ing first encour­ag­ing results which sig­nal the oppor­tu­nity of a pos­si­ble con­tri­bu­tion in the cur­tail­ing of this dis­ease,” Manuela Matarrese, a researcher at the Aero-spa­tial Technology District (DTA) in Brindisi, one of the part­ners of the Redox project, told Olive Oil Times.

“By apply­ing results obtained by pre­vi­ous research and devel­op­ing the hyper­spec­tral sen­sor tech­nol­ogy, the Redox sci­en­tific part­ners should be able to rec­og­nize the health of an olive tree and pre­cisely iden­tify the loca­tion of the even­tual infec­tion,” she added. ​“In many cases of infec­tion, just a branch will have to be removed and not the whole tree.”

Among the Redox part­ners is Unaprol, the olive oil pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion. Referring to the new edi­tion of the regional plan, David Granieri, Unaprol pres­i­dent, said, ​“today we have to pro­tect the Monumental Olive Tree Valley which is a her­itage site for the whole coun­try.”

“In this con­text, the deci­sion of the region to approve grafts on those mil­lenary plants with scions of Xylella-resilient olive cul­ti­vars is a rel­e­vant step for­ward,” he added.

In the Monumental Olive Tree Valley, the new plan con­firmed an expan­sion of spe­cial mon­i­tor­ing, up to 20 kilo­me­ters wide from the south­ern bor­der of the infected Salento region.

“Our goal is to cre­ate bar­ri­ers and mit­i­gate the spread,” Pentassuglia said.

According to the local offi­cials, the mon­i­tor­ing oper­a­tions pro­vided for by the regional plan are unprece­dented in terms of resources used to stop the spread, coor­di­nated actions through­out Puglia and the new strate­gies being applied.

“On one side, we have to cur­tail an extra­or­di­nary phe­nom­e­non. On the other, we have to sus­tain the olive sec­tor and pro­tect the beauty of our coun­try­side,” Pentassuglia said. ​“We need to work with farm­ers, asso­ci­a­tions, munic­i­pal­i­ties, researchers, uni­ver­si­ties and regional author­i­ties.”

“All our efforts, invest­ment plans and con­tri­bu­tions will be mostly focused on the relaunch and the pro­tec­tion of our olive econ­omy, the beat­ing heart of a beloved region, admired by the whole world,” he con­cluded.

• Apulian regional gov­ern­ment
• Puglia Press