Re;Guidance Needed on Olive Oil Farming
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Home / Foreign Agriculture / Olive tree farming is a huge agribusiness market!
Olive tree farming is a huge agribusiness market!
By Editorial Team • on April 17, 2010
Cutting roots to rejuvenate old olive trees
Olive oil is now widely sold in Indian supermarkets. It has a premium health chain!
But what do you know of the oil tree farming? It is a huge farming business from Spain to Greece and other countries!
With the Phoenicians being pioneers in growing olive trees, Tunisia is now looking at new techniques to rejuvenate old olive trees. .. trees that are between 80 and 100 years old. And when it comes to research and new technology in the agriculture sector, it is the government that shows the way.
Tunisia
The government-owned and run Enfidah Agricultural Complex, about 120 km from Tunis, the country’s capital, is a sprawling 2,000 hectare olive farm, producing 2,000-3,000 tonnes of olive oil every year. It includes a modern olive press with a capacity to handle 30 tonnes of olives a day.
The Director-General of the State Land Board, Mr Fethi Jghan, told a group of visitng international journalists on an International Olive Council-sponsored trip, that three years ago his centre introduced a new project to rejuvenate old olive trees. The roots of trees that are over 70 years old are being cut in order to stimulate them to develop new roots and improve the yield of olives.
This is done by running tractors around the tree to turn the soil up to a depth of 50 cm and cut the roots. “With the old roots gone, the tree develops new roots and becomes young in age again and grows more fruit. No special training is required to do this process,” says Mr Jghan.
He explains that in olive cultivation the annual yield is not uniform and the tree gives a good crop only during alternate years. “But by using this method it is possible to get a good crop every year,” he adds.
The technique used at this centre is to run the tractor around the olive tree in three stages, over three years. The first year, the tractor is run only around one third of the tree’s trunk; the next year the second part gets this treatment and the third year sees the completion of the project.
“We started this as a pilot project and have seen excellent results, and have already given this treatment to about 30,000 old olive tress,” said Mr Jghan.
Mr Jghan explained that this rejuvenation technique can only be used in farms where the olive trees are planted wide apart … say only 70 to 80 trees per hectare as adequate space is required to operate the tractor between the tree.
This would not be possible in intensive cultivation (around 250 to 300 tress per hectare) and is out of the question in super intensive farming where as many as 1,500 olive trees are planted in a hectare.
Mr Mohammed Braham, Director of Research and an agronomist from the Olive Institute in Sousse, Tunisia, said the project is being undertaken in collaboration with the University of Ghent in Belgium. This technique is now being used in the “wild plantations” of Tunisia.
Tunisia, Spain, Italy & Greece
Tunisia has 1.7 million hectares under olive
cultivation and produces between 180,000 to 200,000 tonnes of olive oil a year, which makes it the fourth largest producer after Spain, Italy and Greece, in that order.
Ms Magdalini Rappou, Head of the Department of Promotion and Trade Fairs in the IOC, said Tunisia is a pioneer when it comes to initiating research on olive cultivation.
“They have very good experts in science and research and at the IOC, in most of our R&D projects, it is common to find the involvement of Tunisian scientists and agronomists”.
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