La Rioja Preserves Its Olive Heritage to Improve Production

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The recu­per­a­tion and preser­va­tion of indige­nous olive vari­eties with a view to expand­ing La Rioja’s insti­tu­tional bank of vari­eties is the goal of a multi-year ini­tia­tive under­taken by the gov­ern­ment of this Spanish Community with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of local olive grow­ers.

To meet this end, the Government, through its Agriculture Farming and Environment Ministry, has been col­lect­ing veg­e­tal mate­r­ial from olive trees with sin­gu­lar traits related to pro­duc­tiv­ity, olive tree age, type of olive vari­ety, and resis­tance to dis­eases. The spec­i­mens are gath­ered with the help of olive grow­ers from La Rioja.

Once ren­dered to the Ministry, the sam­ples are ana­lyzed, com­plet­ing genet­i­cal iden­ti­fi­ca­tions that might help deter­mine whether the trees have inter­est­ing traits for the bank. When such is the case, ter­mi­nal sprout plants are obtained to be mul­ti­plied and pre­served for their later exam­i­na­tion and selec­tion at Finca La Grajera.

Finca La Grajera is the insti­tu­tional farm close to Logroño where the Government of La Rioja keeps exper­i­men­tal crops that are impor­tant for the Community, such as vines and olive trees. Olive trees spread through eight hectares at La Grajera.

La Grajera’s com­plex also hosts La Rioja’s insti­tu­tional win­ery and an exper­i­men­tal olive oil mill cre­ated in 2006 for the exclu­sive man­age­ment of R&D projects about olive oils from La Rioja. The clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the indige­nous olive vari­eties and the analy­sis of their per­for­mance in super inten­sive crops are part of these research efforts.

Since this ini­tia­tive to recu­per­ate indige­nous olive vari­eties began in 2015, one hun­dred suit­able olive trees have been iden­ti­fied, 74 of which had some mate­r­ial extracted. This helped iden­tify five olive vari­eties not pre­vi­ously cat­a­loged: Picudillo, Negral, Picudo, Aceitunero, and Picalaceña-Cirujal. While the pres­ence of some of these seems to be restricted to one loca­tion, Negral appears to have been located at a larger num­ber of munic­i­pal­i­ties. Other indige­nous olive vari­eties from Rioja includ­ing Rendondilla, Royuela, Machona or Empeltre have also been rec­og­nized. Since 2007, La Grajera’s germplasm bank has been able to gather and plant 141 dif­fer­ent olive vari­eties.

Indigenous vari­eties are a vehi­cle to depict a unique­ness that sets apart par­tic­u­lar agri-food prod­ucts in a global con­text where the homoge­nous pre­dom­i­nates. In this regard, the work of La Grajera has been instru­men­tal in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, selec­tion and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of agri-foods from La Rioja, of which a good exam­ple was Tempranillo Blanco, a highly dis­tinct grape vari­ety that because of La Grajera’s thor­ough work in the past decade began to be bloom among many wine pro­duc­ers in the com­mu­nity.

The effort to recu­per­ate olive vari­eties seeks to fol­low a sim­i­lar path. Single vari­ety olive oils will be elab­o­rated to test their qual­ity and ana­lyze their per­for­mance in larger vol­ume crops. La Grajera has vast olive oil pro­duc­ing expe­ri­ence and in fact is respon­si­ble for mak­ing the Government of La Rioja’s insti­tu­tional olive oils.

The preser­va­tion of these indige­nous olive vari­eties is essen­tial to obtain bet­ter plants that can help La Rioja’s olive sec­tor obtain olive crops that are more prof­itable and of higher qual­ity, and dis­tinct. La Rioja has a Protected Designation of Origin, Aceite de La Rioja, con­sti­tuted in 2004 to pro­tect the olive oils pro­duced in this com­mu­nity, where olivi­cul­ture is cen­te­nary.

This year’s cam­paign to recu­per­ate indige­nous vari­eties focuses on unknown or minor­ity vari­eties show­ing spe­cial traits that can con­tribute to the higher qual­ity and busi­ness prof­itabil­ity, and on very old olive trees of Redondilla-Redondal and Royuela-Arróniz vari­eties from dif­fer­ent areas within La Rioja, to com­plete their genet­i­cal selec­tion. The cam­paign will last through December 2018.

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