Olive trees

Olive trees native to the Middle East and Iraqi Kurdistan region, it can survive severe ecosystems including sandy and rocky soils with high calcite content and extreme temperature fluctuations between-7°C up to +45°C giving yields even with minimum rainfall requirement. Results show that olive is currently grown in a very limited area of less than 250 ha, under drip irrigation system, which mostly depended on supply of water from ground water in Sulaymaniyah governorate. In contrast, 90 % of the world’s olive is dependent on precipitation. In addition, olive can grow and survive minimum rainfall of 300 mm and give satisfactory yields with rainfall of 500 mm without irrigation. The majority of olive fields were established in best fertile agricultural lands. Meanwhile, the aforementioned lands are rich with montmorillonite, which swells when it is moisten and shrinks when it is dry. Therefore, resulting in deep cracks in the soil which causes breaking down of the roots and weakening...

The controlled application of olive mill wastewater (OMW) as a by-product of the olive oil extraction process is widespread in olive oil-producing countries. Therefore, a sustainable approach necessarily targets the positive effects of soil resilience between successive annual applications to exclude possible accumulations of negative consequences. To investigate this, we applied 50, 100, 100 with tillage and 150 m3 OMW ha−1 y−1 for five consecutive seasons to an olive orchard in a semi-arid region and monitored various soil physicochemical and biological properties. OMW increased soil water content with concentration of total phenols, cations, and anions as well as various biological and soil organic matter indices. Soil hydrophobicity, as measured by water drop penetration time (WDPT), was found to be predominantly in the uppermost layer (0–3 and 3–10 cm). OMW positively affected soil biology, increased the activity and abundance of soil arthropods, and served as a food source for...

<p>Population rise and economic growth put additional pressure on global water resources, especially in the Mediterranean Island states that have a long history of aridity and water management challenges. In Crete, Greece, 81.2% of total water consumption is attributed to the agricultural sector, with olive trees covering 64.2% of the total cultivated land. Simulation and applied studies have shown that Irrigation Decision Support Systems (IDSS) can reduce water consumption from 10 (Fotia et al., 2021) to 34% (Phogat et al., 2014). Here we examine the feasibility of optimizing such a IDSS for deficit irrigation while maintaining olive crop yield. Experiments are conducted in the DRIP Project infrastructure (Daliakopoulos et al., 2020; Petousi et al., 2018) including an olive grove of 90 10 year-old trees and 5 20m3 lysimeters planted with olive trees from the same olive grove. The infrastructure includes a precision irrigation system comprised of FDR soil moisture sensors, microclimatic stations, and smart irrigation schedulers. The CROPWAT model (Smith et al., 2002) is calibrated using data from 5 irrigation treatments ranging from overirrigation to rainfed cultivation. Field measurements included stomatal conductance [mmol cm-2 s-1], relative chlorophyl fluorescence [Fv/Fm], leaf relative water content [%], leaf area [%], pruning weight [kg], and yield [kg]. Results clearly highlight the differences in olive tree physiological parameters in deficit irrigation treatments and the lack of significant yield benefit in over-irrigation, while the modeling study can estimate exact irrigation scheduling for incorporation with the IDSS.</p><p><strong>Acknowledgments</strong></p><p>This research has been co-financed by the European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH-CREATE-INNOVATE (project code: T1EDK-03372)</p><p><strong>References</strong></p><p>Daliakopoulos, I. Ν., Papadimitriou, D., Matsoukas, T., Zotos, N., Moysiadis, H., Anastasopoulos, K., Mavrogiannis, I., & Manios, T. (2020). Development and Preliminary Results from the Testbed Infrastructure of the DRIP Project. Proceedings, 30(1), 64. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2019030064</p><p>Doorenbos, J., & Pruitt, W. O. (1975). Guidelines for predicting crop water requirements. Irrigation and Drainage Paper.</p><p>Fotia, K., Mehmeti, A., Tsirogiannis, I., Nanos, G., Mamolos, A. P., Malamos, N., Barouchas, P., & Todorovic, M. (2021). Lca-based environmental performance of olive cultivation in northwestern greece: from rainfed to irrigated through conventional and smart crop management practices. Water (Switzerland), 13(14). https://doi.org/10.3390/w13141954</p><p>Petousi, I., Daliakopoulos, I. N., Matsoukas, T., Zotos, N., Mavrogiannis, I., & Manios, T. (2018). DRIP: Development of an Advanced Precision Drip Irrigation System for Tree Crops. TERRAENVISION s, 1, 2018–2. https://terraenvision2018.eu/abstracts/export.php?id=269</p><p>Phogat, V., Skewes, M. A., Cox, J. W., Sanderson, G., Alam, J., & Šimůnek, J. (2014). Seasonal simulation of water, salinity and nitrate dynamics under drip irrigated mandarin (Citrus reticulata) and assessing management options for drainage and nitrate leaching. Journal of Hydrology, 513, 504–516. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.04.008</p><p>Smith, M., Kivumbi, D., & Heng, L. K. (2002). Use of the FAO CROPWAT model in deficit irrigation studies. In Deficit irrigation practices.</p>

This research focuses on the complex issue of olive oil processing and the resulting technological changes associated with the olive oil industry during this industry's expansion from a small scale domestic to large-scale industrial technology during the Chalcolithic through Iron Ages (c. 4300-586 BC) in Syro-Palestine. The ultimate goal is to see if the level or type of olive oil technology used at sites can be determined based on their olive remains. However, before this could occur, the author prepares a methodology, the components of which include 1) an ethnographic study investigating how traditional oil pressing and processing affect olive remains, and the incorporation of those remains into the archaeological record, and 2) experimental studies to determine how different processing methods might affect olive remains and their incorporation into the archaeological record. The results from the experimental and ethnographic studies are then applied to archaeological remains from a Late Neolithic site to determine the possible type of processing technology. The type of processing indicated by the comparison of the experimental to the archaeological remains, crushing in a small basin, matches the olive oil processing artifacts and features found at the site. The methods used in this study can be applied to other paleoethnobotanical remains and technologies. Contents: Introduction; Origins and early history of the olive; Ethnographic research; Experimental research; Testing an archaeological sample; Olive oil, trade, and the city state; Conclusions.

Omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids are considered essential fatty acids: they are necessary for human health but the body cannot make them. Along with ω-3 fatty acids, ω-6 fatty acids play a crucial role in brain function, as well as normal growth and development. The Mediterranean diet has a healthier balance between these two essential fatty acids; in fact, it does not include much meat (which is high in ω-6 fatty acids) and emphasizes foods rich in ω-3 fatty acids, including whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, olive oil, garlic, as well as moderate wine consumption. In order to propose extra virgin olive oils particularly rich in alpha-linolenic acid and/or characterised by a lower ω-6/ω-3, in the present work we report the results obtained by analysing 110 monovarietal olive oils produced in south Italy. Drupes from the regions of Calabria and Basilicata were harvested during the crop year 2010/2011. On the basis of the observed values, the genotype would influence the fatty acid composition of the oil and then the ω-6/ω-3. From a nutritional point of view, the extra virgin olive oils that were richest in linolenic acid (ω-3) belong to the cultivars of ‘Augellina’ (1.04%), ‘Faresana’ and ‘Rotondella’ (1.0%) and ‘Cima di Melfi’ (0.86%) produced in Basilicata and ‘Scarpetta’ (0.58%), ‘Cerasa di Montenero’ (0.45%), ‘Ghiacciolo’ (0.42%) and ‘Majorca’ (0.41%) produced in Calabria.