`Another Case of Xf in France - Olive Oil Times

Another Case of Xf in France

By Isabel Putinja
Nov. 27, 2015 07:59 UTC

The gov­ern­ment of the Alpes-Maritimes depart­ment announced that two new cases of Xylella fas­tidiosa had been detected in the com­munes of Biot and Menton in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of south­east­ern France.

The new infec­tions have been iden­ti­fied as belong­ing to a sub-species called mul­ti­plex, the same one detected in three other areas of the depart­ment in October 2015, specif­i­cally in Nice, Mandelieu-La-Napoule and Saint-Laurent-du-Var. This sub-species is not harm­ful to olive trees or grape vines. This brings the num­ber of areas infected by Xylella fas­tidiosa in the Alpes-Maritimes depart­ment since October 2015 to five.

A pro­tec­tion zone cov­er­ing a radius of 10 kilo­me­tres (6.2 miles) has been imple­mented around each infected area. Due to the prox­im­ity of the new infec­tions to inter­na­tional bor­ders, the French author­i­ties have for­mally informed the gov­ern­ments of Italy and Monaco.

In Menton, sit­u­ated on the French Riviera near the Franco-Italian bor­der, the infected plant was found in the Jardin du Palais de Carnolès. The area of detec­tion has been closed off and is under­go­ing treat­ment within a radius of 100 meters. Some of the plants destroyed include rose­mary and laven­der, which were imme­di­ately burned on the spot, in accor­dance with a gov­ern­ment-imposed mea­sure to limit the risk of fur­ther con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

In the mean­time, an inves­ti­ga­tion is under­way to find the source of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Initial indi­ca­tions reveal that the infec­tion may have orig­i­nated in a con­sign­ment of poly­gala plants from Italy in 2011 and which may have already been con­t­a­m­i­nated before it reached the Côte d’Azur region.

As part of the mea­sures to pre­vent fur­ther con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, the gov­ern­ment of the Alpes-Maritimes depart­ment has banned the sale of ten plant species, which include spar­tium (spar­tium junceum l), rose­mary (romarin ros­mar­i­nus), poly­gala myr­ti­fo­lia, sweet scented gera­nium (pela­ro­nium grave­olens), myr­tle (myr­tus com­mu­nis), laven­der (laven­dula den­tata), hebe (hebe spe­ciosa), genista ephedroides, cytisus (cytisus race­mo­sus), and sycamore maple (acer pseudo­pla­tanus).




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