New Xylella Fastidiosa Infections Identified in Puglia

Summary

The Xylella fas­tidiosa bac­terium has been detected in olive trees far­ther north in Puglia than ever before, spark­ing con­cerns about the poten­tial eco­nomic con­se­quences of a renewed out­break. Local author­i­ties are imple­ment­ing strict pre­ven­tive mea­sures, includ­ing the removal of infected trees and the estab­lish­ment of buffer zones, to com­bat the spread of the bac­terium and pro­tect olive cul­ti­va­tion in the region.

The north­ward march of the Xylella fas­tidiosa bac­terium in the south­ern Italian region of Puglia con­tin­ues. The lat­est infec­tions have been found far­ther north than ever before.

Four olive trees have been infected by the aggres­sive pathogen in the Barletta-Andria-Trani province, a region respon­si­ble for nearly half of Apulia’s olive oil pro­duc­tion.

The lat­est infec­tions were con­firmed by the lab­o­ra­to­ries of the Institute for the Sustainable Protection of Plants, which is part of the National Research Council (CNR).

These find­ings are a direct result of the exten­sive mon­i­tor­ing activ­i­ties car­ried out in the Apulian region by local insti­tu­tions, researchers, and vol­un­teers.

Since January, nearly 250 sam­ples have been col­lected and ana­lyzed in the Bisceglie area, mostly from olive trees, along with a few from other species, such as wild cherry, which are con­sid­ered sus­cep­ti­ble to Xylella fas­tidiosa.

The dis­cov­ery of infec­tions north of Bari trig­gered a nation­wide alarm, com­ing less than three months after the most recent Xylella out­break found in Minervino Murge, about 60 kilo­me­ters from Bisceglie.

In both cases, the sub­species ​“pauca” of Xylella fas­tidiosa was iden­ti­fied; the strain has already dev­as­tated south­ern Puglia for over a decade.

Oronzo Antonio Milillo, pres­i­dent of the Apulian Federation of Agronomists, told AndriaViva mag­a­zine that the alert level is cur­rently very high due to the spe­cific char­ac­ter­is­tics of the infec­tion, which are still being inves­ti­gated.

“The bac­terium typ­i­cally spreads only a few hun­dred meters per day, so it’s rea­son­able to assume that a vec­tor may have unknow­ingly trans­ported it along the road. This is a pos­si­bil­ity we must seri­ously con­sider,” Milillo said, refer­ring to insects that often attach to cars and can eas­ily be trans­ported over long dis­tances by unsus­pect­ing vehi­cles.

In a note pub­lished on the Apulian Regional Council web­site, regional author­i­ties explained that all ser­vice areas along the motor­ways are cur­rently being inspected.

It is believed that the insect vec­tors respon­si­ble for the new infec­tions may have trav­eled aboard trucks stop­ping at these ser­vice areas.

“On the other hand, if the spread is due to a nat­ural move­ment of the vec­tor, we should already have found, or will likely find through fur­ther test­ing, inter­me­di­ate areas of infec­tion. That’s why the alert level is extremely high,” Milillo added.

Twelve years after Xylella fas­tidiosa began infect­ing mil­lions of olive trees in the south­ern Salento area, the new find­ings have reignited con­cerns about the poten­tial eco­nomic con­se­quences of a renewed out­break.

“We are talk­ing about an area… where olive grow­ing is the lead­ing open-air indus­try, with sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of jobs and house­hold incomes tied to the sec­tor,” said Gennaro Sicolo, pres­i­dent of the Apulian branch of the Italian Farmers’ Confederation (CIA).

“If strong action is not taken imme­di­ately, the sit­u­a­tion could spi­ral out of con­trol in the met­ro­pol­i­tan area of Bari and the province of Foggia as well,” he warned.

As pre­scribed by European Union reg­u­la­tions, a 400-meter-wide area around the infected trees is cur­rently under­go­ing thor­ough sam­pling of olive trees and other Xylella fas­tidiosa-sus­cep­ti­ble plants.

The infected trees will be removed through pro­ce­dures designed to pre­vent the fur­ther spread of the bac­terium. A new red zone has been declared within a 50-meter radius of the trees.

Within a 2.5‑kilometer radius around the infected areas, a buffer zone has been estab­lished, mark­ing the area as poten­tially affected by Xylella fas­tidiosa.

This des­ig­na­tion enables spe­cial ter­ri­to­r­ial sur­veil­lance and plant mon­i­tor­ing. 

Within the buffer zone, strict manda­tory pre­ven­tive actions are being imple­mented, pri­mar­ily aimed at pre­vent­ing the spread of insects that carry the bac­terium from one plant to another.

Both the CIA and the olive oil pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion Unapol have called for a new national plan to com­bat Xylella fas­tidiosa and to allo­cate more funds for the recov­ery of olive cul­ti­va­tion in the affected areas, pri­mar­ily through the use of Xylella fas­tidiosa-resis­tant olive cul­ti­vars.

“The four infected olive trees are all in a road­side ser­vice area near Bisceglie. Both the trees and the land they occupy were neglected for a long time,” Giuseppe di Niso, spokesper­son for the Bari chap­ter of the farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion Confagricoltura, told BisceglieViva.

“In that area, the manda­tory main­te­nance work was not car­ried out as required by cur­rent regional reg­u­la­tions on Xylella fas­tidiosa pre­ven­tion,” di Niso said.

He urged peo­ple not to panic but to com­ply more strictly with the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing pre­ven­tive mea­sures.

Those mea­sures have already been shown to sig­nif­i­cantly slow the spread of the bac­terium, for which no cure cur­rently exists.

“I can’t say that all my fel­low farm­ers fol­low the guide­lines against the bac­terium,” Pietro Maggi, a farmer in Barletta-Andria-Trani, told Olive Oil Times. ​“But I can say that aware­ness is grow­ing, we all know we need to stand together if we want to con­tain the dam­age at least.”