La pesca tabacchiera in Sicilia: opportunità da valorizzare.

Una recente indagine condotta nel territorio etneo dal Dipartimento Demetra dell'Università di Palermo, ha condotto all'individuazione di 7 diverse pesche piatte, raccolte e valutate presso un campo catalogo. Le pesche tabacchiere sono caratterizzate dal sapore dolce e da un profumo ed aroma inconfondibili. L'ampio calendario di maturazione, accentuato dalla conformazione del territorio, gli eccellenti caratteri organolettici e l'elevata richiesta da parte del consumatore, sono i presupposti per creare valide operazioni commerciali

Modelli d'impianto, forme di allevamento e criteri di potatura per la nuova olivicoltura

The olive growing has usually been practiced in shallow and low fertile soils due to the frugality and rusticity of this tree. Low planting density orchards, based on large-sized, free-shaped canopy trees were traditionally developed to stand such peculiar agronomical conditions; this represented the only sustainable orchard model on which, for centuries, has been developed the Italian olive oil industry. In recent times, the promotion of the Mediterranean diet as an healthy eating plan, based on the use of flavorful extravergin olive oil, largely contributed to increase worldwide interest on this peculiar ingredient of Mediterranean cooking style. In order to promptly satisfy the increased oil demand in the international market, new planting models have been projected and tested for the new olive oil industry, keeping sustainable the cost of production. Among those, at the beginning of the 2000’, Super High Density (SHD) hedgerow (1500-2500 trees/ha) resulted to fit, more than others, the above mentioned requirements for the developing olive oil industry in new growing countries. traditional olive orchards is low, alternate and production costs are too high, new orchards Unfortunately, few cultivars are suitable to SHD hedgerow system and these foreign cultivars do not fit the Italian olive oil industry, traditionally based on many local cultivars, producing olive oils of unique flavors and taste. Since the productivity of models should be adopted to make the Italian olive industry economically sound. Therefore, more attention has to be deserved to orchard efficiency, early bearing, constant production, high oil accumulation in the fruit and to the feasibility of the harvest mechanization. Particularly, it is important to consider the olive orchard light use efficiency (light to dry matter), carbon acquisition and distribution to the fruits (harvest index) when choosing new plantation systems. Furthermore, harvest mechanization efficiency has to be increased and tree damages have to be reduced in order to avoid excessive cost of production. Since harvester machines mainly work on the basis of two models, “discontinuous”/“continuous”, planting density, tree space, training system and pruning criteria should be adapted to fit the harvesters requirements.Realizzato nell'ambito del progetto "Ricerca ed Innovazione per l’Olivicoltura Meridionale", finanziato dal MiPAA

Genetic similarity among Tunisian cultivated olive estimated through SSR markers

Olive (Olea europaea L. subsp. europaea var. europaea) is one of the oldest fruit tree in the Mediterranean basin, and is cultivated for oil and canned fruit. Part of this interest is driven by the economic importance of olive oil which is increasing throughout the world due to its beneficial effect to human health. In Tunisia, olive has great socio-economic importance, with more than 60 millions olive trees cultivated for olive oil production including a wide range of cultivars which are widely extended from the north to the south regions of the country for its high economic value. Here, we applied microsatellites (SSRs) molecular markers to assess the genetic variability of the most important Tunisian olive cultivars. In total, the 10 simple sequence repeats (SSR) loci revealed 73 alleles with a mean number of 07 alleles per locus were detected. The polymorphism index content (PIC) values were high (0.72) ranging from 0.86 at GAPU 103 to 0.56 at EMO 90. The analysis of the dendrogram showed six main separate groups

Evaluation of Small Vase and Y-trellis Orchard Systems for Peach and Nectarine Production in Mediterranean Regions

Two peach planting systems, Small Vase (SV) and Y-trellis (Y), were evaluated and compared in the Mediterranean settings of Southern Italy. The two orchards were located next to each other on relatively uniform soil and terrain, and the observations included two peach (Rich May and Summer Rich) and two nectarine (Big Bang and Nectaross) cultivars. In the SV system, trees were spaced at 4.5 x 2.5 m (888 trees/ha), whereas in the Y system, trees were spaced at 5.5 x 2 m (909 trees/ha) and no roof gap was left between rows. Yield per tree, fruit size grade, unit price of sold peaches for each size grade, materials and labor for cultural management and associated costs, fixed costs at planting, and grower's profit were quantified during the first six years from planting. Fixed costs at planting were twice as much in the Y system, and no significant yield was recorded in the first two years in any of the two systems. Regardless of cultivar, the Y system reported 20% higher yields, 31% greater amount of management labor, and 10% lower labor efficiency (kg fruits/hr) than the SV system. Fruit unit value (euro/kg) was similar in the two systems. Profit varied greatly depending on the cultivar, and only 'Nectaross' generated a greater profit in the Y than the SV system. For this cultivar, the pay-back period (years needed to pay off the additional investment of establishing a Y trellis by its additional profit) was 2.5 years, indicating an advantage of the Y system over the SV by the 4th year. The yield gap between the two systems tended to decrease after the 5th year. The latter trend, along with the high initial investment and management costs in the Y system, suggests better performance and more sustainable productions in the SV than in the Y system

Planting Systems for Modern Olive Growing: Strengths and Weaknesses

The objective of fully mechanizing olive harvesting has been pursued since the 1970s to cope with labor shortages and increasing production costs. Only in the last twenty years, after adopting super-intensive planting systems and developing appropriate straddle machines, a solution seems to have been found. The spread of super-intensive plantings, however, raises serious environmental and social concerns, mainly because of the small number of cultivars that are currently used (basically 2), compared to over 100 cultivars today cultivated on a large scale across the world. Olive growing, indeed, insists on over 11 million hectares. Despite its being located mostly in the Mediterranean countries, the numerous olive growing districts are characterized by deep differences in climate and soil and in the frequency and nature of environmental stress. To date, the olive has coped with biotic and abiotic stress thanks to the great cultivar diversity. Pending that new technologies supporting plant breeding will provide a wider number of cultivars suitable for super-intensive systems, in the short term, new growing models must be developed. New olive orchards will need to exploit cultivars currently present in various olive-growing areas and favor increasing productions that are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. As in fruit growing, we should focus on “pedestrian olive orchards”, based on trees with small canopies and whose top can be easily reached by people from the ground and by machines (from the side of the top) that can carry out, in a targeted way, pesticide treatments, pruning and harvesting

Automatic detection and agronomic characterization of olive groves using high-resolution imagery and LIDAR data

The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union grants subsidies for olive production. Areas of intensified olive farming will be of major importance for the increasing demand for oil production of the next decades, and countries with a high ratio of intensively and super-intensively managed olive groves will be more competitive than others, since they are able to reduce production costs. It can be estimated that about 25-40% of the Sicilian oliviculture must be defined as “marginal”. Modern olive cultivation systems, which permit the mechanization of pruning and harvest operations, are limited. Agronomists, landscape planners, policy decision-makers and other professionals have a growing need for accurate and cost-effective information on land use in general and agronomic parameters in the particular. The availability of high spatial resolution imagery has enabled researchers to propose analysis tools on agricultural parcel and tree level. In our study, we test the performance of WorldView-2 imagery relative to the detection of olive groves and the delineation of olive tree crowns, using an object-oriented approach of image classification in combined use with LIDAR data. We selected two sites, which differ in their environmental conditions and in their agronomic parameters of olive grove cultivation. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is the low necessary quantity of data input and its automatibility. However, it should be applied in other study areas to test if the good results of accuracy assessment can be confirmed. Data extracted by the proposed methodology can be used as input data for decision-making support systems for olive grove management

An investigation of the self- and inter-incompatibility of the olive cultivars 'Arbequina' and 'Koroneiki' in the Mediterranean climate of Sicily

In this investigation, the self-(in)compatibility of the Spanish cultivar Arbequina and the Greek cultivar Koroneiki was studied for the first time in Sicily, where these low vigour cultivars were recently introduced in super-intensive olive groves. Self- (S.P.) and openpollination (O.P.) tests, observation of fruit set and paternity test of seeds with microsatellite (SSR) markers, were performed to ascertain whether these cultivars were self-fertile and/or inter-compatible. For S.P. tests, branches with flowers at the balloon stage were bagged. For the O.P. tests, flowers were left to pollinate under natural conditions. Fruits from S.P. and O.P. were collected in November and fruit set was calculated. Genomic DNA was extracted from seeds. None of the 'Arbequina' seeds studied in either the S.P. or O.P. tests originated from self-fertilization. In addition, none of these seeds had 'Koroneiki' as the pollen parent. In contrast, 'Koroneiki' was found to be predominantly self-compatible in self-bagged branches, with 70% of the seeds originating from selffertilization. However, the incidence of self-fertilization was low (11%) in seeds from the O.P. test. Low levels of inter-compatibility were found between 'Arbequina' and 'Koroneiki', while many local cultivars were found to be good pollinators. The information presented here will be useful to growers for planning their orchards with suitable pollinators and for our breeding program aiming at obtaining new low vigour olive genotypes. In addition, our results suggested that the recent model of attribution of S-alleles and the prediction of suitable pollinizers for a given variety should be more cautious and always based on controlled crosses and paternity testing of seed from those crosses

The first high-density sequence characterized SNP-based linkage map of olive (Olea europaea L. subsp. europaea) developed using genotyping by sequencing

A number of linkage maps have been previously developed in olive; however, these are mostly composed of markers that have not been characterized at the sequence level, supplemented with smaller numbers of microsatellite markers. In this investigation, we sought to develop a saturated linkage mapping resource for olive composed entirely of sequence characterized markers. We employed genotyping by sequencing to develop a map of a F2 population derived from the selfing of the cultivar Koroneiki. The linkage map contained a total of 23 linkage groups comprised of 1,597 tagged SNP markers in 636 mapping bins spanning a genetic distance of 1189.7 cM. An additional 6,658 segregating SNPs were associated with the 23 linkage groups identified but their marker order was not determined in this investigation. The SNP markers sequences were submitted to NCBI database. The linkage map produced will be an invaluable resource for the study of tree habit and vigour traits segregating in the progeny, and will assist to anchor and orientate sequencing scaffolds from future genome sequencing efforts