Researchers Identify 30 New Olive Varieties in Aragón

An inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research group in Aragón has iden­ti­fied 30 new olive vari­eties among the autonomous community’s cen­te­nar­ian trees.

The five groups par­tic­i­pat­ing in the project, coor­di­nated by Olivos de Aragón, iden­ti­fied 96 vari­eties in the west of the autonomous com­mu­nity, which includes the Bajo Aragón Protected Designation of Origin region.

The researchers then com­pared DNA mark­ers and mor­pho­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tions against more than 1,200 vari­eties in the Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training’s (Ifapa) World Olive Germplasm Bank in Córdoba.

Based on these com­par­isons, the researchers iden­ti­fied 30 olive vari­eties that did not match the bank’s genetic mate­r­ial.

“We par­tic­i­pated in the project because the area of​the Bajo Aragón PDO was the least stud­ied in terms of know­ing what local vari­eties could be found,” said Joaquín Lorenzo, the project’s coor­di­na­tor.

The regional gov­ern­ment of Aragón stip­u­lates that extra vir­gin olive oil must be made ​“exclu­sively from the Empeltre, Arbequina and Royal olives, of which Empeltre accounts for a min­i­mum pro­por­tion of 80 per­cent” to receive the Bajo Aragón PDO.

“Here, most of the olive groves are Empeltre,” Lorenzo said. ​“Therefore,​inves­ti­gat­ing these iso­lated or small olive groves had never been a con­cern.”

According to Lorenzo, about 95 per­cent of the olive groves in the region are com­prised of Empeltre olive trees. These trees came to dom­i­nate the land­scape after a severe frost in 1956, which dam­aged many endemic and older olive trees.

While anec­do­tal evi­dence of unique olive vari­eties had long existed among local grow­ers, a sci­en­tific effort to cat­a­log all the olive vari­eties was not under­taken until now.

“Now that we know they are all dif­fer­ent vari­eties, we will be able to research them fur­ther,” Lorenzo said.

Along with research orga­ni­za­tions, Viveros Mariano Soria, a nurs­ery, and Aceites Lis, a mill, have joined the project to help graft the new olive tree vari­eties and pro­duce extra vir­gin olive oil from exist­ing trees of the newly iden­ti­fied vari­eties that yield olives each sea­son.

“We must fin­ish char­ac­ter­iz­ing them by repro­duc­ing them all in a nurs­ery,” Lorenzo said. ​“We will also have to deter­mine if qual­i­ties are suit­able for table olives or if the organolep­tic and chem­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics are suit­able for olive oil.”

“With all this, the idea is that the best vari­eties will have a per­ma­nent col­lec­tion on the farm that the gov­ern­ment of Aragón has in El Cañizo,” he added.

The selected vari­eties will be mon­i­tored to see if they resist dis­eases, drought, frost or high tem­per­a­tures.

Lorenzo empha­sized that this is a long-term project. Still, he added that Aceites Lis has already pro­duced extra vir­gin olive oil from newly iden­ti­fied olive vari­eties and sub­mit­ted them to a local lab­o­ra­tory and tast­ing panel for physic­o­chem­i­cal and organolep­tic analy­sis.

Aceites Lis did not respond to a request for com­ment about the behav­ior of the new olive vari­eties when milled or the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the result­ing olive oil.

While some of the newly dis­cov­ered vari­eties may be cul­ti­vated for com­mer­cial pur­poses, Lorenzo said pre­serv­ing and study­ing all newly dis­cov­ered vari­eties is essen­tial for the future of the olive oil sec­tor.

“Most new olive groves are planted inten­sively to allow for a mech­a­nized har­vest, with more pro­duc­tive vari­eties being pre­ferred,” Lorenzo said. ​“Therefore, diver­sity is being lost. We are obliged to study new vari­eties and pre­serve them because, in the future, they may be very use­ful to us.”