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The University of Córdoba in Spain has received a dona­tion of olive seedlings from uncat­a­logued ancient olive vari­eties.

They will be clas­si­fied and pre­served at the university’s Olive Germplasm Bank.

The seedlings, which were donated by Banco Santander, came from the vari­etal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion research work the University’s Higher Technical School of Agricultural Engineering and Forestry (ETSIAM) con­ducted on Banco Santander’s ancient olive tree col­lec­tion.

Located at the bank’s head­quar­ters in Boadilla del Monte in Madrid, this col­lec­tion is con­sid­ered the world’s most impor­tant pri­vate col­lec­tion of olive trees.

The agree­ment between Banco Santander and the university’s UCOLIVO group has so far enabled the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of more than 200 cen­te­nary and mil­lenary olive trees in the col­lec­tion.

Researchers applied mor­pho­log­i­cal and mol­e­c­u­lar mark­ers for the analy­sis of the trees, the major­ity of which were spec­i­mens of known vari­eties, includ­ing Farga and Lechín de Granada.

The research revealed three rel­e­vant major find­ings. They iden­ti­fied nine known olive vari­eties that are prob­a­bly among the old­est.

They also detected a pat­tern of high fre­quency graft­ing done with wild olive trees in ancient times.

Finally, they dis­cov­ered the exis­tence of mil­lenary vari­eties that had not yet been cat­a­logued, but whose resis­tance over time sug­gests they are excel­lent spec­i­mens to study, specif­i­cally for the traits that affect their longevity. This could be instru­men­tal for the improve­ment and sus­tain­abil­ity of olive crops.

The university’s UCOLIVO group has been work­ing on the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Banco Santander’s olive vari­ety col­lec­tion since 2013.

Banco Santander’s olive tree col­lec­tion started in the early 2000s with the bank’s for­mer pres­i­dent, Emilio Botín. He began a search for very high qual­ity olive trees to be planted at the bank’s new head­quar­ters and con­sid­ered nature as a vehi­cle to cre­ate a work­ing envi­ron­ment that made employ­ees more com­fort­able and more pro­duc­tive.

Experts helped the now deceased Botín to assem­ble the col­lec­tion of olive trees, which orig­i­nally came from Spain, Portugal, Italy and North Africa. Botín began buy­ing cen­te­nary olive trees for the col­lec­tion as a means to pro­tect them from being cut.

The col­lec­tion extends over more than 350 acres and has some 1,500 trees, one-third of which are mon­u­men­tal and sin­gu­lar, includ­ing mil­lenary olive trees. A team of pro­fes­sion­als over­sees and mon­i­tors the trees, con­duct­ing strict peri­od­i­cal con­trols of their devel­op­ment and phy­tosan­i­tary con­di­tion.

The trees that grow from the donated seedlings will be planted at the Rabanales University cam­pus where more than half of the world’s 1,200 olive vari­eties are pre­served.

Prior to this exer­cise con­ducted by UCOLIVO, Banco Santander had already worked with Spain’s Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) to com­plete the world’s first full DNA sequenc­ing of an olive tree, a mil­lenary tree, a copy of which was also donated by the bank to the University of Córdoba for its incor­po­ra­tion into the Olive Germplasm Bank.

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