Recent News

The Pro­tected Geo­graph­i­cal Indi­ca­tion (PGI) Olio Lucano, reserved for extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced in the Ital­ian south­ern region of Basil­i­cata, also known as Luca­nia, has been reg­is­tered and pub­lished in the Offi­cial Jour­nal of the Euro­pean Union.

In three months, if there is no oppo­si­tion, the Euro­pean Union will pub­lish the reg­is­tra­tion reg­u­la­tion which will enti­tle Lucan­ian pro­duc­ers to use the IGP Olio Lucano mark for their pro­duc­tions. In the mean­time, the IGP Olio Lucano Con­sor­tium will be able to use the qual­ity mark on a pro­vi­sional basis with the approval of the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry.

Extra vir­gin olive oils bear­ing the PGI must be made from at least one of about thirty olive vari­eties grown in the region:

Acerenza, Ogliarola del Vul­ture, Ogliarola del Bradano, Maiat­ica, Nociara, Ghi­an­nara, Augel­lina, Justa, Cor­nac­chi­ola, Romanella, Carpinegna, Fare­sana, Sam­marti­nengna, Spin­oso, Can­nel­lina, Cima di Melfi, Fasolina, Fasolona, Lar­daia, Olivo da mensa, Orazio, Pal­marola, Proven­zale, Racioppa, Roma, Roton­della, Rus­sulella, Scar­petta, Taran­tina, Coratina, Fran­toio and Lec­cino.

No more than 20 per­cent can be com­prised of other vari­eties. All stages of the PGI pro­duc­tion process, namely, cul­ti­va­tion, har­vest­ing, and extrac­tion, must take place within the Lucan­ian ter­ri­tory.

“This is a very impor­tant recog­ni­tion and we look for­ward to the defin­i­tive pub­li­ca­tion,” the pres­i­dent of Basil­i­cata’s pro­ducer orga­ni­za­tions, Clau­dio Cufino told Olive Oil Times. ​“We estab­lished our asso­ci­a­tion in the run-up to the PGI, which rep­re­sents only the for­mal part of the qual­ity path taken by the Lucan­ian pro­duc­ers over the last years.”

“This mark of ori­gin is not a point of arrival but a start­ing point, the begin­ning of a series of actions that will strengthen the pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion of our prod­uct in our coun­try and world­wide. More­over, the good out­come of the last cam­paign – in the 2019/20 crop year, the regional olive oil pro­duc­tion more than quadru­pled com­pared to the pre­vi­ous one – fires us with enthu­si­asm as we start a new sea­son in the sign of qual­ity.”