The partners of the Life Resilience project have met in Carmona (Seville) to analyze the progress that the project is carrying out, as well as the different actions planned for the coming months.
The main objective of this project, co-financed by the Life program of the European Union, and which has a total budget close to three million euros, is to develop olive varieties that are as tolerant as possible to Xylella fastidios
a and other pathogens, minimizing the losses that so far entails having an infected plantation, as well as implementing sustainable practices that contribute to prevent the spread of the bacteria and increase resistance to outbreaks of pests and pathogens.
The Life Resilience project is formed by different partners Galpagro, Agrodrone, Asaja, Agrifood Communication, University of Cordoba, CNR IVALSA, Nutriprado, Salov and SACH, as well as Transfer Consultancy as Compliance Manager and Ideagro as an external agronomic adviser.
So far, the soil inventory has been developed, through a baseline study, the Xylella fastidiosa power vector inventory, the design of the demonstration trials and the selection of measures to improve the productivity and sustainability of the project. system.
Studies have been carried out to know what different types of soil there are, their homogeneity and the composition of the microbiological activity of the soil in each one of the farms, located in Carmona (Spain), Alandroal (Portugal) and Pisa (Italy). On the other hand, it has been determined what types of plants will be used for the vegetation cover, the irrigation strategy to be implemented and what type of microorganisms should be added to the soil to improve soil health and increase the resilience of the plant.
In addition, the presence of potential vectors and their distribution over time has been estimated thanks to the official information available and the methodology has been stipulated to regularly monitor the presence of potential vectors that, when added to other relevant variables, will obtain scenarios of the possible distribution of vector populations.
Finally, 500 of the genotypes developed to obtain Xylella fastidiosa resilient varieties will be planted at the «El Valenciano» experimental farm in Carmona (Seville) next summer to study their evolution, together with the 500 genotypes already planted.