Experiment with North African Olive Varieties Bears Fruit in Croatia

Olive vari­eties native to North Africa are becom­ing some of the best suited for the cli­mate in south­ern Croatia, one of the coun­try’s lead­ing pro­duc­ers has found.

Ivica Vlatković, an award-win­ning pro­ducer and pres­i­dent of the Association of Olive Growers of Zadar County, has spent the last decade graft­ing Chemlali and Moroccon Picholine olive trees with the local Oblica vari­ety.

His 500-tree olive grove, sit­u­ated above the pic­turesque town of Novigrad in north­ern Dalmatia, com­prises mostly local vari­eties, com­bined with some Italian, Greek and North African ones.

“The African olive vari­eties of Chemlali and Moroccan Picholine pro­duced the best this year,” Vlatković said. ​“Studying the olive vari­eties, I real­ized that the African vari­eties are grow­ing in more favor­able cli­matic con­di­tions for bet­ter bud dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, which means bet­ter fer­til­ity.”

He added that his Chemlali and Moroccan Picholine trees had demon­strated ​“extra­or­di­nary,” uni­form fer­til­ity due to the absence of the alter­na­tive bear­ing cycle in these vari­eties.

Vlatković also praised the resilience of his Chemlali trees. After strong winds dam­aged the north-fac­ing branches of some of his trees, Vlatković was still able to har­vest a mod­est crop from the south-fac­ing branches of those same trees.

Along with their har­di­ness, Vlatković also believes that cli­mate change has made the Chemlali and Moroccan Picholinhe vari­eties par­tic­u­larly suit­able for Dalmatia.

Average annual tem­per­a­tures have con­tin­ued to warm each year and now resem­ble those typ­i­cal of North Africa in the sum­mer. Periods of dry spring weather also have trans­formed into more extended dry peri­ods through­out the sum­mer.

However, olive trees can cope with this arid cli­mate in North Africa due to the tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­en­tial dur­ing the days and nights. Significantly cooler night­time tem­per­a­tures resulted in dew form­ing, pro­vid­ing much-needed water to the trees.

Unlike in North Africa, tem­per­a­tures remain steady through­out the day and night on the Dalmatian main­land and its coastal islands. As a result, Vlatković installed irri­ga­tion to replace the absence of the dew each morn­ing.

“I don’t irri­gate the olives. I spray them,” he said. ​“This way, 10 times less water is used, and the effects are bet­ter. The olive is a crop of an arid, dry cli­mate, and it requires mois­ture at the right time, which is sum­mer.”

“It has devel­oped the abil­ity to absorb mois­ture through the leaves quickly,” Vlatković added. ​“In this way, these olives live and bear fruit with­out rain.”

Along with their resilience to Dalatia’s increas­ingly arid cli­mate, Vlatković said the result­ing olive oil also has a dis­tinct fla­vor. ​“Chemlali oil has a pro­nounced spici­ness and pleas­ant bit­ter­ness,” he said.

Vlatković received his first Chemlali seedlings from the Institute of Adriatic Culture near Split, where a res­i­dent engi­neer gifted him seedlings from the par­ent tree.

According to Vlatković, the par­ent Chemlali tree was brought to Croatia – then part of Yugoslavia – after for­mer pres­i­dent Josip Broz Tito vis­ited an olive tree col­lec­tion in Morocco and decided to bring some sam­ples back with him.

“Reading about the value of these new olives, I real­ized that they are the most abun­dant in the Maghreb coun­tries and that they are good oilseeds,” Vlatković said. ​“They prob­a­bly go back to the dis­tant past of the Phoenician route of the spread of olives across the Mediterranean.”

Along with North African vari­eties, he is also bull­ish that the rare Israeli vari­ety, Barnea, will thrive in Dalmatia. He was first given a Barnea tree by a Croatian col­league liv­ing in France and planted the tree in his grove to honor the Israeli sci­en­tist, Shimon Lavee.

While Croatia is a long way off from pro­duc­ing olive oil from North African and Middle Eastern vari­eties on a com­mer­cial scale, Vlatković has turned his atten­tion to the upcom­ing har­vest.

He believes it will be fruit­ful if it rains by the end of this month. The same may be said for most Croatian olive groves irri­gated dur­ing the pre­vi­ous dry period. The pits have turned brown, and now the oil is accu­mu­lat­ing in the fruit.

“If the rains fall, every­thing will be saved, and it will be an above-aver­age good olive grow­ing year,” Vlatković con­cluded. ​“If the drought lasts until September, it will not be good for the yield or the qual­ity of the oil.”