Researchers Evaluate 12 Olive Varieties for Drought Tolerance

Finca La Pontezuela and the University of Córdoba have joined forces on a research project inves­ti­gat­ing olive vari­eties well-adapted to drought.

On the 5‑hectare plan­ta­tion, researchers will eval­u­ate 12 olive vari­eties from Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iran and Spain for the next five years.

The researchers will assess them based on their abil­ity to adapt to weather extremes, includ­ing low rain­fall and high tem­per­a­tures, which are becom­ing increas­ingly com­mon due to cli­mate change.

Based on their eval­u­a­tions, researchers aim to deter­mine the pos­si­bil­ity of plant­ing the olive vari­eties across Spain and poten­tially renew the agree­ment to con­tinue research.

Juan Antonio Gómez-Pintado, Fina La Pontezuela’s pres­i­dent, said the project rep­re­sents the first-of-its-kind project in Spain.

“It is the first time that a research project of these char­ac­ter­is­tics has been car­ried out in Spain, which unites a pub­lic uni­ver­sity and a com­pany, and which aims to study the adap­ta­tion of olive vari­eties from other coun­tries to cli­mate change for sub­se­quent imple­men­ta­tion in our coun­try,” he said.

“This research will make it pos­si­ble to advance in the knowl­edge of the tol­er­ance of dif­fer­ent olive vari­eties to water scarcity con­di­tions, as well as the pos­si­ble mech­a­nisms involved,” added Carlos Trapero, a researcher from the University of Córdoba’s agron­omy depart­ment.

After two years of severe drought and for­est fires, stud­ies con­cern­ing adapt­ing dif­fer­ent crops to hot­ter and drier con­di­tions have become cru­cial for Spain’s agri­cul­tural indus­try.

Despite recent rain­fall, Spain’s state mete­o­ro­log­i­cal agency (Aemet) said the coun­try received 16 per­cent less rain in the cur­rent mete­o­ro­log­i­cal year, which began in October 2022, than the pre­vi­ous one.

Olive farm­ers across Andalusia, the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, have told Olive Oil Times that con­di­tions in the groves this year are the same or worse than last year.

As olive oil grow­ers pray for rain in September and October, the Spanish gov­ern­ment has passed a €2 bil­lion aid pack­age for the agri­cul­tural sec­tor to improve water infra­struc­ture and pro­vide direct aid to ranch­ers and farm­ers.

Farmers argue that finan­cial aid is nec­es­sary to deal with Spain’s his­toric drought in the short term. Still, research into cli­mate adap­ta­tion strate­gies remains crit­i­cal to the sector’s future suc­cess.

Research is also under­way in Andalusia and the Canary Islands, a vol­canic arch­i­pel­ago off the coast of north­west Africa, to study the impact of the lack of chill hours on olive devel­op­ment and the oil qual­ity of dif­fer­ent pop­u­lar Spanish vari­eties.

The flurry of new research projects comes as Carmen Crespo, Andalusia’s min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture, water and rural devel­op­ment, said the olive sec­tor must become more resilient.

“We have a drought that is no longer tem­po­rary; it is struc­tural in our region and, of course, affects the olive grove, our main crop,” she told Olive Oil Times in March.

• University of Córdoba agri­cul­ture depart­ment
• Aemet