LIFE Resilience, a project co-funded by the LIFE programme of the European Union (EU), whose main objective is the prevention of Xylella fastidiosa in high-density olive and almond orchards, continues its work on the development of olive varieties that are as tolerant as possible to Xylella fastidiosa and other pathogens.
Thus, the partners of the Life Resilience project in Spain met online on 25 January to discuss new advances in the project.
During the meeting, the University of Cordoba recalled its implementation in 2017 and 2018 of two phases of crosses in the field with a total of 1000 genotypes in which resistant mothers such as the varieties ‘Leccino’ and ‘Fs-17’ were included. To date, 18 genotypes have been pre-selected for their good agronomic characteristics (early entry into production, fat yield, oil stability) and high probability of resistance to the bacterium, which will be confirmed at field level in Puglia (Italy) in the coming months. These genotypes have already been propagated and are currently growing in the UCO greenhouses, waiting for them to reach a height of 60-80 centimetres. These plants will be sent this spring both to the Xylella fastidiosa zero zone in Scorrano, Puglia (Italy) and to two more plantations in Lucca, Tuscany, Italy owned by the project partner «SALOV Group» and to the experimental farm of the project coordinator «Balam Agriculture» («Finca el Valenciano») to continue with the agronomic evaluation.
For its part, Greenfield Technologies has continued to provide the rest of the partners with information on the soil, vegetative development and water stress of the crops and the climatology of the different demonstration farms and replicas of the project, providing valuable spatial and temporal information for the establishment of the methodologies of good cultivation practices that are being investigated to combat Xylella and other pathogens. In this way, the company has carried out both drone flights with multispectral and thermal cameras in the farms that are part of the project, as well as the processing of satellite images every 2-3 or 5 days, thanks to the Sentinel missions of the Copernicus programme of the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA). This data will continue to be updated during 2022 in the viewer created for the project, both for the demonstration farms and the replicas. Similarly, another objective for this year will be to analyse the temporal and spatial variability of crop behaviour between treatments and campaigns.
Finally, Balam Agriculture indicated that among the activities carried out in 2021 are the measurement of water potential on the El Valenciano farm for the controlled deficit irrigation strategy, application of bacteria and microorganisms and control of plant covers. Leaf and soil sampling, oil extraction through the University of Seville and analysis of its characteristics by the Miguel Hernández University, among others, have been some of the tasks carried out for the calculation of the project indicators and impact assessment. In addition, advisory activities are being carried out with farmers for the implementation of sustainable techniques in their crops.