New Efforts to Promote Rare White Olive Variety in Calabria

The Leucocarpa cul­ti­var, a rare white olive vari­ety once widely spread in the south­ern Italian region of Calabria, has been offi­cially rec­og­nized by the regional gov­ern­ment as a sym­bol of the region.

Its unique appear­ance, his­tory and the dis­tinc­tive oil that it yields have led to a renewed inter­est in fur­ther research­ing and devel­op­ing the cul­ti­var in the region.

“The deci­sion of the regional gov­ern­ment will pro­tect the Leucocarpa vari­ety and pro­mote Calabria’s roots,” Sergio De Caprio, regional sec­re­tary for envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, told Olive Oil Times.

The announce­ment comes on the heels of the work of experts and vol­un­teers who recently began map­ping the pres­ence of the ivory-white fruit-bear­ing tree through­out the region.

“Those white dru­pes are fas­ci­nat­ing; their con­nec­tion to the reli­gious his­tory of our peo­ple comes imme­di­ately to mind. The tree gives off a unique sense of purity and beauty,” De Caprio said.

“This tree is a sym­bol of Calabrian nature, intro­duced by Basilian monks from the Greek island of Kasos in the 6^th cen­tury A.D.,” he added. ​“With our announce­ment, we are recon­nect­ing with our past and pro­mot­ing the idea that our soci­ety was founded on peace among cit­i­zens and nations.”

Environmental orga­ni­za­tions, such as Italia Nostra and the World Wildlife Fund, are coop­er­at­ing with arche­ol­o­gists to under­stand bet­ter the role the white olive tree played in the region’s his­tory. Meanwhile, the local gov­ern­ment is work­ing to bring young peo­ple and stu­dents to appre­ci­ate its unique her­itage.

“We planted the first Leucocarpa tree in the San Luca vil­lage together with the local stu­dents,” De Caprio said. ​“Our goal is to involve them in dis­cov­er­ing their roots and pro­mote extra vir­gin olive oil cul­ture.”

“Every year, we will plant those trees with stu­dents through­out the region and the extra vir­gin olive oil qual­ity and cul­ture will be brought into the schools,” he added. ​“Extra vir­gin olive oil is part of their her­itage, as is the Leucocarpa tree.”

Leucocarpa olives turn ivory-white when they are ripe due to chloro­phyll degra­da­tion when the syn­the­sis of antho­cyanins and other flavonoids do not acti­vate. These polyphe­no­lic sec­ondary metabo­lites are respon­si­ble for the stan­dard darker drupe col­ors in other cul­ti­vars.

“There is so much we do not know yet about this tree, such as how it was grown and per­ceived,” said Anna Rotella, an arche­ol­o­gist work­ing on the project. ​“But thanks to the work of the vol­un­teers, we can already con­firm its pres­ence near many places asso­ci­ated with cults in Calabria.”

Rotella and her col­leagues believe that the dis­tinc­tive olive oil derived from Leucocarpa played a role in cult activ­i­ties.

“In the past, tem­ples and churches could not count on suf­fi­cient ven­ti­la­tion, so the choice of the right fuel for using indoor lamps was vital,” she told Olive Oil Times. ​“Leucocarpa olive oil pro­duced only mod­est smoke emis­sions, unlike lam­pante olive oil.”

The researchers believe the intro­duc­tion of elec­tric­ity ren­dered that spe­cific use of the Leucocarpa olive oil obso­lete, which led to many trees being aban­doned.

“We used to con­sider Leucocarpa a rare plant and while it is still quite rare, it spread across our region more than we thought,” Rotella said. ​“Some farm­ers still cut them down in their fields because they do not believe it can bring them a profit and, over time, wild­fires have also lim­ited the pres­ence of the tree in the ter­ri­tory.”

“Still, many remem­ber those trees in the vicin­ity of churches,” she added. ​“Others asso­ciate that olive oil to its ancient use in child nutri­tion.”

Rotella explained that its pres­ence near tem­ples and grave­yards demon­strates the role of the tree in reli­gious rit­u­als.

“A beau­ti­ful tra­di­tion in the Spezzano Albanese vil­lage included a funeral pro­ces­sion, which streamed through the streets of the town and ended up just in front of the white olive tree,” she said. ​“As the cof­fin would become heav­ier for the bear­ers, they would lean it right on the tree.”

However, she added that the his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tion of the tree with the peo­ple must con­tinue to be inves­ti­gated.

“These white olive trees come with a spe­cific iden­tity, which is why we need to gather all those streams of mem­o­ries before they fade away,” she added.

A renewed inter­est in the Leucocarpa tree could help estab­lish what Rotella described as the ​“white olive route,” a touris­tic and gas­tro­nomic project that would involve all of the 80 Calabrian vil­lages where the tree has been iden­ti­fied. This project has piqued the inter­est of some local olive oil pro­duc­ers.

Antonio Muzzupappa, a grower who also oper­ates a mill in the Calabrian city of Vibo Valentia, has planted 350 Leucocarpa trees in recent years.

“Propagating this olive tree by graft­ing can be a real chal­lenge,” Muzzupappa told Olive Oil Times. ​“Whereas with the tra­di­tional graft­ing, we have a very low per­cent­age of fail­ures – 50 of every 1,000 at most – with Leucocarpa, almost half of them will not work. Still we hope to add 150 more white olive trees in the next few months.”

Muzzupappa remem­bers how his ances­tors prop­a­gated the tree by using the radial shoots, result­ing in trees whose roots would often not be strong enough.

Muzzupappa focuses on grow­ing and trans­form­ing sev­eral dif­fer­ent vari­eties of olives, which nat­u­rally led him to the idea of pro­duc­ing organic Leucocarpa extra vir­gin olive oil, both for cook­ing and for blend­ing with other oils.

“This past sea­son, we already had a few olives to har­vest and we pro­duced a sam­ple of about 20 liters of Leucocarpa oil,” Muzzupappa said. ​“It is trans­par­ent and at first, it looks like seed oil. We hope this olive oil will be increas­ingly used for fry­ing as a sub­sti­tute for lesser-qual­ity oils.”

“When used to this end, it does not pro­duce smoke and still encom­passes all of the good qual­i­ties of a true extra vir­gin olive oil,” he added.

Muzzupappa con­firmed that he is work­ing with other Calabrian grow­ers to expand the cul­ti­va­tion of Leucocarpa olives and to pro­mote it as a per­fect-for-fry­ing olive oil.

The extra vir­gin olive oil obtained from the olives ​“has the same char­ac­ter­is­tics as all the oth­ers con­cern­ing the com­po­si­tion of fatty acids, fla­vors and aro­mas typ­i­cal of a light fruity prod­uct,” Innocenzo Muzzalupo, an olive researcher at the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, pre­vi­ously told Olive Oil Times.

• Italia Nostra
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