Evaluation of the cold tolerance of two olive (Olea europaea L.) varieties adapted for mechanical harvesting, under different soil-climate and culture conditions in Greece

Abstract

Olive tree and its products are an important part of many people daily diets. Lately the interest in olive products rose significantly because of the positive benefits these products have on humans health and because it's an important source of essential elements from a healthy diet. To this is added also the population growth which makes the demand of olives to increase even more. The problem with the olives is that they grow only in certain areas of the globe like the Mediterranean countries, where is originated, and in those countries which have similar climatic conditions. The cold tolerance and resistance of olives is something that hasn't been studied enough although is a major problem which limits the olive plantation to only a small part of the agricultural area, inversely proportional with its importance. One solution to create enough olive products to meet the demand, since the area of planting is limited to Mediterranean and similar climatic conditions, is to increase the planting density per unit of land. This paper is a part of a long-term project and attempts to describe the first two years of this project involving different planting densities, different soils, climatic conditions and locations where two olive varieties were planted and their cold resistance ability will be evaluated as well under the before mentioned treatments.. Results from the evaluation in the first two years has shown that during the first year, Koroneiki variety exhibited significant more cold tolerance than Arbequina and also produced more flowers, in both test locations. During the second years, results were different. based on the weather conditions in each location: almost all trees died from cold in the Kolhiko location where winter and early spring temperatures were record-low for the area, while almost all trees survived in the AFS location. The results of this study are aiming to help European and Greek olive growers, and not only, also farmers who are dealing with olive oil production, to choose what planting density should use when they decide to start a new olive grove or to switch from the conventional planting to the new high or super-high density and to give a clearer picture of which olive variety should they use taken into the consideration the local climatic conditions.