“If you give an April mignola / go with the barrel…”. The proverb accompanies the great expectations of olive growers in southern Italy where the thumbnail is already in an advanced stage, leaving imagine that the wait year of office can be plentiful after a couple of highly critical campaigns.
From the three regions with the greatest olive-growing vocation – Puglia, Calabria e Sicily – the chorus is unanimous: having made the due exorcisms, the premises are really positive. To confirm this on the Apulian side is the agronomist James Carreras, technical manager of Assoproli Bari. “Excellent conditions in our region – he begins – and they are all the more significant if we take into account that we come from two difficult years. The prospect is of an excellent production, obviously subject to the vagaries of the weather during pollination and subsequent setting. We also have water-rich soils today, having fallen over 120mm in the past few weeks. Therefore, the prospects, and I am referring to all of Puglia, are really good".
He echoes it Mario Terrasi, president of Oleum Sicilia, the largest Op on the island, as well as fresh president of the Consortium for the Protection of PGI Sicily. “Fingers crossed – he begins – but everything seems to be going well. The mignolatura is now complete, let's hope that in May the temperatures will not rise excessively. The main varieties of our land, from Nocellara del Belice to Biancolilla, from Cerasuola to Tonda Iblea, suffer in flowering if the thermometer exceeds 35 degrees, because the pistil of the flower dries up and pollination does not take place. This is a problem registered in recent years and which also affects 50% of production. Which, we have found, does not occur, for example, in super-intensive olive groves that are able to withstand even 40 degrees. Even from the point of view of water supply, Sicily does not present any problems. The reservoirs are full, the artificial lakes too”.
Among the regions that suffered the most in the past campaign, there is certainly Calabria. Perspectives fortunately reversed for the next one, as confirmed by the agronomist Thomas Vatrano: “At present we are in the phase of complete thumbnailing in the flatter areas, but the flowers are not yet white and ready to open. At higher altitudes the little fingers are still in a less developed phase, where the rachis is in the process of distension and the flower buds are not fully evident. The temperatures have values that are not within the average for the current season, with rainfall and sometimes thunderstorms that are clearly influencing the vegetative and reproductive development of the olive tree. In the provinces of Catanzaro, Cosenza and Crotone where last year we were in OFF (download) there is a great expectation by virtue of the excellent abundance of flowers, the lowering of temperatures recorded in recent months and the copious rainy events bode well . But we are well aware that climate change and the delicacy of the flower biology of the olive tree (no longer rustic as one might think) lead us to be cautious and hope for the best”.
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