Early Harvest Signals Record Year in Brazil’s Minas Gerais

Summary

Harvest in Minas Gerais, Brazil started ear­lier than usual, with grow­ers expect­ing a record year due to high yields. The sec­tor is becom­ing more pro­fes­sional, with grow­ers mak­ing inten­tional har­vest deci­sions and focus­ing on qual­ity to pro­tect olive oil stan­dards. Future expan­sion in the region will depend heav­ily on sci­en­tific research, includ­ing cul­ti­var selec­tion and struc­tured breed­ing pro­grams.

Harvest began ear­lier than usual, and grow­ers are still expect­ing a record year as they report high yields from the ongo­ing cam­paign in Minas Gerais, Brazil’s south­east­ern state.

“2026 promises to be a mile­stone for olive oil pro­duc­tion in Brazil’s Southeast. Winter tem­per­a­tures and well-dis­trib­uted rain­fall pro­moted intense flow­er­ing, which trans­lated into abun­dant fruit,” Moacir Batista do Nascimento Filho, pres­i­dent of the local asso­ci­a­tion of olive grow­ers Assoolive, told Olive Oil Times.

“Production has increased sub­stan­tially over the years,” Amanda Souza, an olive grow­ing researcher at EPAMIG, the agri­cul­tural research com­pany of the state of Minas Gerais, told Olive Oil Times.

Souza said this season’s gains fol­lowed a win­ter shaped by a mod­er­ate La Niña, bring­ing lower, more sta­ble tem­per­a­tures, cold nights, and more than 700 hours below 7°C. She said the con­di­tions favored flo­ral induc­tion, sup­port­ing higher fruit set in many groves.

Souza added that researchers rely on year-round cli­mate mon­i­tor­ing sup­ported by a net­work of more than 450 mete­o­ro­log­i­cal sta­tions installed across olive groves to track regional micro­cli­mates.

Unfavorable weather last sea­son kept pro­duc­tion below 60,000 liters, far under the pre­vi­ous record of 150,000 liters reported in 2024. ​“My expec­ta­tion is to reach the mark of 200,000 liters this year,” do Nascimento Filho said.

Minas Gerais accounts for about 65 per­cent of Brazil’s total olive oil out­put, con­cen­trated in the foothills of the Serra da Mantiqueira. Orchards are typ­i­cally planted at ele­va­tions between 900 and 1,900 meters, and about 120 to 150 farms oper­ate in the region.

Unlike Rio Grande do Sul, where olive cul­ti­va­tion is con­cen­trated on expan­sive, level estates, pro­duc­tion in Minas Gerais is spread across smaller groves often located on steep ter­rain. Limited oppor­tu­ni­ties for mech­a­niza­tion increase oper­at­ing costs, reflected in higher retail prices for many oils pro­duced in the state.

In 2026, har­vest oper­a­tions began in January. Souza said rain­fall was a key fac­tor behind the ear­lier start, as Brazil’s sum­mer is typ­i­cally wet­ter than peak ripen­ing peri­ods in the Northern Hemisphere har­vest.

Average rain­fall in 2026 sig­nif­i­cantly exceeded the 2025 aver­age, Souza said. ​“High pre­cip­i­ta­tion enhances water uptake by the fruit, lead­ing to increased fresh weight and, con­se­quently, a reduc­tion in oil con­tent on a wet weight basis,” she added.

Excess rain­fall can also com­pli­cate milling, as fruit with ele­vated mois­ture con­tent can make cen­trifu­ga­tion and effi­cient sep­a­ra­tion more dif­fi­cult. Souza said these batches are known in the sec­tor as ​“dif­fi­cult pastes.”

High humid­ity can also increase dis­ease pres­sure and fruit drop in widely planted cul­ti­vars such as Grappolo 541, a national vari­ety devel­oped by EPAMIG that has become pop­u­lar among grow­ers for its agro­nomic per­for­mance in the region.

Producers say the early start is not only a reac­tion to the weather. It has also become a delib­er­ate strat­egy to pro­tect olive oil qual­ity.

“Early har­vest­ing mod­u­lates olive oil qual­ity toward a more intense sen­sory pro­file, due to higher con­cen­tra­tions of phe­no­lic and volatile com­pounds, result­ing in more pro­nounced aro­mas and fla­vors,” Souza said.

Do Nascimento Filho said the sector’s grow­ing tech­ni­cal matu­rity is mak­ing har­vest deci­sions more inten­tional. ​“Olive grow­ers are becom­ing more pro­fes­sional through courses, sem­i­nars and lec­tures, as well as by seek­ing knowl­edge from the more expe­ri­enced olive grow­ers in the sec­tor,” he said.

That pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion extends beyond the orchard. Do Nascimento Filho said that pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions are con­sol­i­dat­ing and adapt­ing facil­i­ties to com­ply with cur­rent leg­is­la­tion, includ­ing reg­is­tra­tion with the Ministry of Agriculture, to strengthen qual­ity con­trols across the value chain.

He added that asso­ci­a­tions such as Assoolive and Ibraoliva are help­ing con­nect grow­ers, millers and other stake­hold­ers, sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of a more orga­nized olive farm­ing sec­tor.

At EPAMIG’s Experimental Field in Maria da Fé, researchers track indi­ca­tors through­out the repro­duc­tive cycle, includ­ing fruit set, growth, oil con­tent and dis­ease inci­dence. Souza said chem­i­cal and qual­ity analy­ses are con­ducted at the site’s Olive Oil Analysis Laboratory, coor­di­nated by researcher Luiz Fernando Oliveira.

Souza said the research effort has strength­ened pathogen iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and phy­tosan­i­tary pro­to­cols to man­age threats such as Xylella fas­tidiosa, olive leaf spot and anthrac­nose, pro­tect­ing both yields and qual­ity.

In recent years, a grow­ing num­ber of Brazilian pro­duc­ers have tri­umphed in the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, some­times even after very adverse weather.

Since EPAMIG extracted Minas Gerais’ first extra vir­gin olive oil in Maria da Fé in 2008, the sec­tor has expanded into areas includ­ing Itabirito, Ouro Preto, Diamantina, the Jequitinhonha Valley and the state’s por­tion of the Espinhaço Range, where aver­age alti­tudes are around 1,200 meters.

Altitude remains a defin­ing fac­tor, Souza said, because it increases win­ter chill­ing hours and pro­vides mod­er­ate ther­mal ampli­tude in the period before flow­er­ing. ​“These con­di­tions favor flo­ral induc­tion and directly influ­ence the pro­duc­tive poten­tial of the fol­low­ing har­vest,” she said.

Souza added that field obser­va­tions and cli­matic data sug­gest higher ele­va­tions can slow fruit devel­op­ment and ripen­ing, help­ing oils retain higher lev­els of phe­no­lic and volatile com­pounds and sup­port­ing greater sen­sory com­plex­ity.

Both Souza and do Nascimento Filho said future expan­sion will depend heav­ily on sci­en­tific research, includ­ing cul­ti­var selec­tion and struc­tured breed­ing pro­grams. They noted that Brazil cur­rently has eleven pro­tected national vari­eties and one more under reg­is­tra­tion.

Costs and logis­tics remain major con­straints in Minas Gerais, largely because of the moun­tain­ous land­scape. ​“Most man­age­ment activ­i­ties are car­ried out man­u­ally due to the steep topog­ra­phy and the scarcity of rural labor. We must develop alter­na­tives, includ­ing equip­ment and machin­ery, to facil­i­tate these activ­i­ties,” do Nascimento Filho said.

Souza added that ris­ing aver­age tem­per­a­tures are another chal­lenge. ​“This sce­nario requires both the adap­ta­tion of pro­duc­tion sys­tems and the search for cul­ti­vars more tol­er­ant to warmer cli­matic con­di­tions,” she said, point­ing to mount­ing cli­mate change pres­sures.

Maintaining high stan­dards also requires tight con­trol at every stage of pro­duc­tion, Souza said, espe­cially under Minas Gerais’ cli­matic con­di­tions and dis­ease risks.

Looking ahead, she said expan­sion may increas­ingly tar­get warmer regions where topog­ra­phy is bet­ter suited to mech­a­niza­tion, allow­ing grow­ers to scale up while pro­tect­ing qual­ity.

“Scientific research will be the guid­ing force dri­ving this expan­sion,” Souza said, cit­ing work on edapho­cli­matic zon­ing, the selec­tion of cul­ti­vars suited to dif­fer­ent regions and genetic improve­ment pro­grams to raise pro­duc­tiv­ity.

“Today, we see an increas­ing num­ber of insti­tu­tions embrac­ing olive grow­ing in its dif­fer­ent areas of devel­op­ment, includ­ing man­age­ment, genet­ics, gas­tron­omy and tourism. This will cer­tainly strengthen our sec­tor, ensur­ing orderly growth of the activ­ity and of olive oil qual­ity in Minas Gerais,” do Nascimento Filho con­cluded.