FAO Launches Xf Prevention Program in North Africa and Middle East

A tech­ni­cal coop­er­a­tion pro­gram has been launched by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) with the aim of pre­vent­ing the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa (Xf) in North Africa and the Middle East.
See Also:Xylella Fastidiosa Articles and Updates
The aim of the project to facil­i­tate early detec­tion, diag­no­sis and mon­i­tor­ing of Xf, a bac­te­ria that has caused the wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion of olive trees in Italy’s Apulia region.

The tech­ni­cal coop­er­a­tion pro­gram will work to improve the tech­ni­cal capac­ity of local insti­tu­tions and farm­ers and raise aware­ness on how to pre­vent the spread of Xf through early detec­tion, diag­no­sis, mon­i­tor­ing, and phy­tosan­i­tary mea­sures. It began in response to requests by the gov­ern­ments of the seven tar­get coun­tries, which include Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia.

The pro­gram was offi­cially launched in Tunis on August 29, 2016 with a five-day work­shop that addressed the plan­ning of activ­i­ties related to the project, and the design­ing of an action plan for its oper­a­tional imple­men­ta­tion.

Following the detec­tion of Xf in olive trees in Apulia in 2013, the bac­te­ria later spread to the French island of Corsica and south­east­ern France in 2015. Prevention mea­sures such as the pro­gram launched by the FAO are seen as imper­a­tive to pre­vent the poten­tial spread of Xf to other regions of the world.

• FAO


• POnTE Project