Puglia Warns Farmers of Ineffective Xylella Fastidiosa Cures

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There are no prod­ucts on the mar­ket that may be used to elim­i­nate Xylella fas­tidiosa from infected trees, accord­ing to offi­cials from the Apulian regional bal­ance com­mis­sion.

“The two prod­ucts that have been mar­keted in the past few weeks as reme­dies against the des­ic­ca­tion of the trees, and use­ful for bring­ing the plants back to their orig­i­nal glory, are a mix of nat­ural soaps or adju­vants,” Salvatore Infantino, direc­tor of the phy­tosan­i­tary obser­va­tory of Puglia, told a pub­lic hear­ing.

The offi­cials admit­ted that after eight years, there is still no easy solu­tion for stop­ping the most active pathogen affect­ing olive trees in Italy’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region.

Currently, stem­ming the disease’s spread requires trees to be mon­i­tored and even­tu­ally destroyed within infected areas, known as red zones, and con­tin­u­ally observed in the sur­round­ing buffer and con­tain­ment zones.

Infantino said that devel­op­ing a prod­uct capa­ble of com­bat­ing Xylella fas­tidiosa remains an impor­tant goal for many of those work­ing to cur­tail the dev­as­ta­tion caused by the bac­te­ria.

“At the moment, good farm­ing prac­tices and erad­i­ca­tion are the only weapons we have against Xylella to buy time while wait­ing for a truly effec­tive treat­ment,” he said.

After the hear­ing, the pres­i­dent of the Apulian regional bud­get com­mis­sion, Fabiano Amati, told the local Brindisi Report news­pa­per that ​“pub­lic enti­ties should not repeat the errors of the past by giv­ing credit to non-sci­en­tific the­o­ries that already have done so much dam­age and to which much time has been lost in the fight against Xylella.”

However, he added that stud­ies con­ducted in the United States and Spain about stem­ming the spread of the dis­ease were show­ing some promise.

“A few pieces of research hint at a pos­si­ble role of a few viruses, which find nutri­ment in those bac­te­ria,” Amati said. ​“But we still have to wait and see what hap­pens in the trans­la­tion from an exper­i­men­tal lab envi­ron­ment to an open grove.”

Hurdles in pub­lic financ­ing and in devel­op­ing a strat­egy to both con­tain the bac­te­ria and to restore Xylella-stricken agri­cul­tural areas remain among the chal­lenges local gov­ern­ment and grow­ers face, the local branch of the national farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti, said.

Savino Muraglia, pres­i­dent of Coldiretti Puglia, said that only six per­cent of all fund­ing requests had been approved up to now, with no actual fund trans­fer hav­ing yet occurred.

“Nineteen months after the launch of the Apulian olive regen­er­a­tion plan worth €300 mil­lion, €134 mil­lion are still to be allo­cated,” Muraglia said. ​“The inter­ven­tions which would have allowed farm­ers to return to pro­duc­tion after the Xylella cri­sis are yet to be acti­vated.”

“So, too, have the funds needed to remove the with­ered trees, fos­ter research and pro­duc­tion diver­sity,” he added. ​“There is also the fail­ure of the project to graft the mon­u­men­tal olive trees, which had only 91 farm­ing com­pa­nies adher­ing due to the bureau­cratic hur­dles.”

Muraglia, who is also an award-win­ning pro­ducer in Puglia, said that diver­si­fi­ca­tion was vital for farm­ers in the Salento region seek­ing to recu­per­ate the land. He con­tended that the olive mono­cul­ture that had tra­di­tion­ally pre­vailed was one of the rea­sons why the bac­te­ria so heav­ily impacted the region.

Salento is a west-cen­tral area in Puglia and has been impacted severely by Xylella fas­tidiosa. Coldiretti said that in the last seven years, many olive groves had become grave­yards. As a result, farm­ers did not earn any income, and more than 5,000 jobs were lost.

Farmers in Bari, which is located north of Salento, are also wor­ried about Xyella fas­tidiosa spread­ing from the con­tain­ment and buffer zones in Alberobello, Fasano and Locorotondo to their own trees.

On the other side of the Salento, in Lecce, farm­ers also reported olive tree pro­duc­tiv­ity falling by half. Significant pro­duc­tion drops also have been reported in the Brindisi province, just east of Salento.

According to the regional phy­tosan­i­tary obser­va­tory, more than 108,000 plants have been mon­i­tored in 2021. Of these, 56 tested pos­i­tive for Xylella fas­tidiosa, with 26 in the con­tain­ment area and 30 in the buffer zone.

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