Researchers Unveil the Latest Technologies to Help Harvest and Produce Olive Oil

After four years, the researchers behind the Innolivar project pre­sented some of their work at the University of Córdoba in Andalusia.

The project focused on devel­op­ing 12 sep­a­rate pieces of tech­nol­ogy and lines of inves­ti­ga­tion related to the mech­a­niza­tion of olive groves, improv­ing sus­tain­abil­ity, cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion tac­tics and devel­op­ing biotech­nol­ogy and trace­abil­ity tech­nol­ogy.

Since the project began in 2017, researchers from the uni­ver­sity and their part­ners in the pri­vate sec­tor have worked to develop new patents and build pro­to­types that will even­tu­ally be sold to olive farm­ers and oil pro­duc­ers in response to what some of the indus­try’s largest stake­hold­ers told the researchers they needed most.

Among the tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by the researchers were two meant to help both tra­di­tional grow­ers and high-den­sity farm­ers.

For tra­di­tional grow­ers, the researchers devel­oped a ​“mul­ti­pur­pose vehi­cle for work in slop­ing olive groves that are dif­fi­cult to mech­a­nize.”

Jesús Gil Ribes, a pro­fes­sor of agro­forestry at the University of Córdoba and the pro­jec­t’s sci­en­tific direc­tor, told Olive Oil Times the researchers decided to develop this project due to the high num­ber of deaths in Spain caused by over­turned trac­tors, which he esti­mated at one each week.

“In Andalusia, the main pro­duc­ing region, with almost 80 per­cent of the total, there are more than half a mil­lion hectares with aver­age slopes greater than 15 per­cent and more than a quar­ter of a mil­lion with more than 25 per­cent,” he said.

The new vehi­cles fea­ture artic­u­lated joints on each of the four inde­pen­dent wheels, which along with the help of hydraulic cylin­ders, allow the vehi­cle to change its track width and cen­ter of grav­ity while mov­ing on slopes.

“In addi­tion, the cabin is self-lev­el­ing, and the trac­tor can work on side slopes of up to 45 per­cent,” Gil Ribes added.

As a result, the new vehi­cle will allow tra­di­tional farm­ers to work on steeper slopes. He added that the vehi­cle also fea­tures numer­ous hitches, allow­ing farm­ers to use dif­fer­ent tools simul­ta­ne­ously.

Meanwhile, the researchers have man­u­fac­tured a self-pro­pelled har­vester for high-den­sity groves to quickly and effi­ciently gather the olives.

Gil Ribes said the idea behind this machine is to reduce the num­ber of peo­ple required to har­vest the olives.

Instead of the tra­di­tional teams of 10 peo­ple, includ­ing the machine oper­a­tory and crew that helped move the can­vas and col­lect the fallen fruit, the new machine will reduce the num­ber to two or three.

The goal of these har­vesters is to reduce the cost of col­lect­ing olives. However, Gil Ribes said they could also be adapted to other crops, includ­ing cit­rus and almonds.

“There are two types of com­bines devel­oped,” he said. ​“Those based on trunk vibra­tion and simul­ta­ne­ous mechan­i­cal shak­ing of the crown, which is done by olive grow­ers who are rid­ing har­vesters on inten­sive [high-den­sity] olive groves and who need the help of auto­mated sup­port sys­tems to detect trunks by the vibra­tor clamp and for its vibra­tion. This work is inter­mit­tent.”

There are also ​“those based on lat­eral cup shak­ers equipped with trunk detec­tion sys­tems that allow their dri­ving to be semi-auto­mated and olive tree crown detec­tion sys­tems so that the shaker ele­ments can auto­mat­i­cally adapt to them. This work is con­tin­u­ous,” Gil Ribes added.

“Both types require adapted prun­ing, which is not too demand­ing, and they have remote track­ing and har­vest mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems,” he con­tin­ued.

Researchers also inves­ti­gated new olive vari­eties to adapt to high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity groves.

Sikitita, Sikitita Dos, Martina and seven advanced selec­tions from the University of Córdoba and the Andalusian Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research (IFAPA) breed­ing pro­gram are being tested in the groves.

“In 2021, the first sig­nif­i­cant har­vest was har­vested in the four tri­als, and it is planned to con­tinue eval­u­at­ing them for at least five more years,” Gil Ribes said.

Along with tech­nol­ogy to help farm­ers’ pro­duc­tiv­ity, the researchers also spent con­sid­er­able time focus­ing on sus­tain­abil­ity, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of an intel­li­gent atom­izer, which allows farm­ers to apply pes­ti­cides at dif­fer­ent times and con­cen­tra­tions, depend­ing on the need of the tree.

Gil Ribes said the goal was to reduce the pes­ti­cide required to keep the olives safe from pests and dis­eases.

Among the tech­nolo­gies devel­oped for this end were auto­matic detec­tion sys­tems that use two three-dimen­sional cam­eras or ultra­sound sen­sors to scan the trees in real-time and apply pes­ti­cides as nec­es­sary. Gil Ribes said these sys­tems are 35 per­cent more effi­cient.

The researchers also devel­oped refrig­er­a­tion units for the pes­ti­cides, which pre­vents them from evap­o­rat­ing as quickly, and remote mon­i­tor­ing and spray­ing con­trols that upload data online, allow­ing farm­ers to mon­i­tor their use more con­cisely.

“They are more expen­sive but more effi­cient equip­ment that will reduce the use of phy­tosan­i­tary prod­ucts as required by the European Commission’s Farm-to-Fork strat­egy,” he said.

The researchers also designed machin­ery to gather and shred all the refuse from prun­ing the olive trees in the spring, which will simul­ta­ne­ously remove a vec­tor for many com­mon pests and allow pro­duc­ers to cre­ate mulch and com­post.

Researchers also devel­oped biotech­ni­cal prod­ucts to help farm­ers stem the spread of com­mon pests and dis­eases affect­ing olive trees, includ­ing an ento­mopath­o­genic fungi for­mu­la­tion to kill the olive fruit fly sus­tain­ably. Other prod­ucts that kill the microor­gan­isms respon­si­ble for ver­ti­cil­lium wilt are also being tested.

However, Gil warned that the biotech­nol­ogy projects have a much longer-term time scale due to var­i­ous bureau­cratic hur­dles.

“Biotech projects [aimed at fight­ing dis­eases] need a long and expen­sive approval process,” he said. ​“But there are com­pa­nies will­ing to do it.”

Along with research­ing means and tech­nolo­gies to improve olive farm­ing, Innolivar also focused on oil pro­duc­tion and trace­abil­ity. Researchers designed pro­to­types to help auto­mate the milling and fil­ter­ing process.

Among these is a pro­to­type that Gil Ribes said would help with the clas­si­fy­ing and sort­ing of olives as soon as they arrive in the mill with­out super­vi­sion from a per­son.

“This pro­to­type allows batches to be clas­si­fied accord­ing to their state of matu­rity, tem­per­a­ture, degree of dirt­i­ness and pres­ence of dam­age,” he said.

“On the other hand, Prototype 7 Automation of the fil­ter­ing process is a sys­tem that allows con­tin­u­ous con­trol and action on the degree of tur­bid­ity of the oil and the pres­ence of impu­ri­ties, in an auto­mated and dig­i­tal­ized way,” Gil Ribes added.

Automation in the mill will add value to the olive oil in terms of trace­abil­ity because the data about the olives can be tracked through­out the trans­for­ma­tion process.

“Costs can be reduced because pro­to­types require less labor because they are embed­ded in a data model oper­ated from the cloud and do not require a phys­i­cal pres­ence,” Gil Ribes said.

Away from the pro­duc­tion side, the researchers also worked on devel­op­ing chem­i­cal tast­ing instru­ments to deter­mine and iden­tify the chem­i­cal com­pounds respon­si­ble for the olive oil’s fla­vors and aro­mas. Gil Ribes described the machines as an ​“elec­tronic nose and mouth.”

“These instru­ments work by ana­lyz­ing oil sam­ples from each cat­e­gory and cre­at­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic pro­files for each of them,” Gil Ribes added.

One pro­to­type does this by ana­lyz­ing the volatile com­pounds present in a gram of oil with­out chem­i­cal reagents.

“The oil sam­ple is gen­tly heated to encour­age the removal of volatiles, and these are sep­a­rated in a gas chro­mato­graph and detected in an ion mobil­ity spec­trom­e­ter or mass spec­trom­e­ter,” Gil Ribes said.

“On the other hand, the sec­ond designed pro­to­type ana­lyzes the com­pounds that the taster appre­ci­ates in the mouth,” he added. ​“In this case, it is nec­es­sary to extract the polar com­pounds from the oil. They are ana­lyzed using ionic mobil­ity spec­trom­e­try that can option­ally be cou­pled to a spec­trom­e­ter of masses.”

The results pro­vided by these two machines cre­ate a ​“spec­tral fin­ger­print” for the oil that can later be used to iden­tify it.

Gil Ribes said that the devel­op­ment of these machines required at least 300 sam­ples of olive oil made from dif­fer­ent vari­eties, geo­graph­i­cal areas and har­vest sea­sons. Then, the results from each test were com­pared with the results obtained from two tast­ing pan­els.

“Once the instru­ments have been cal­i­brated with this num­ber of sam­ples, they could work auto­mat­i­cally for years assign­ing the cat­e­gory of an oil sam­ple with a high degree of reli­a­bil­ity, at a very low cost per sam­ple,” he said.

While the top­ics cov­ered by the researchers over the past four years have been quite eclec­tic, Gil Ribes said the goal for all of them is the same: to make Spanish olive oil pro­duc­ers more com­pet­i­tive on the global mar­ket.

“If we man­age to get some or many of the pro­to­types into the com­mer­cial phase (there are already three lines that have reached the mar­ket), it will make the Spanish olive grove more com­pet­i­tive and facil­i­tate its inter­na­tional expan­sion,” he said.

“The improve­ment of its mech­a­niza­tion, the con­trol of ero­sion, the improve­ment of the mills, the chem­i­cal tast­ing, the bio­log­i­cal fight against pests and dis­eases, the new vari­eties for hedgerows of which in prac­tice only two are avail­able, and the trace­abil­ity from the field to the con­sumer are all key aspects in this regard,” Gil Ribes con­cluded.