The run does not stop Xylella which has now also arrived in countryside of Putignano. And the sixth municipality in the province of Bari to have been affected by the bacterium, according to the latest monitoring of thePhytosanitary Observatory of the Puglia Region. As can be seen from the institutional site "Emergenza Xylella" another 21 positive olive trees that carry the seasonal total to 341 infected plants, of which the first two in the countryside of Putignano, representing – this municipality – the new western limit of the epidemic. Another 14 plants, on the other hand, have formed a new outbreak in the countryside of Castellana Grotte.
For CIA Italian Farmers Puglia he has already expected too much. We need to proceed immediately appointment of a Government Commissioner that has extraordinary powers and additional and extraordinary resources with respect to those already allocated. CIA-Agricoltori Italiani di Puglia requests the appointment of a Commissioner who will act on the basis of a precise timetable of actions, with more radical and rapid contrast measures, accompanying those measures with the more rapid disbursement of contributions and more agile rules at the order to proceed with eradication and replanting.
For Gennaro Sicolo, president of CIA Puglia and national vice president of CIA-Italian Farmers (in the picture), “the Government cannot continue to postpone the appointment of a Commissioner any longer. In fact, Xylella does not wait for the tactics of politics. The bacterium advances further and further north and continues to destroy many other olive groves. Nobody has this power to put the problem on standby, neither politics nor the bureaucracy or the times of the judiciary”, adds Sicolo. “Too many delays have accumulated in the fight against Xylella, as well as in the provision of resources and the implementation of measures for the regeneration of olive trees. Meanwhile, while seven different ministers have alternated in the Ministry of Agriculture in the last ten years, Xylella has had time to destroy as many as 22 million olive trees and to reduce the regional olive production potential by a third, practically eliminating the olive growing of the provinces of Lecce, Brindisi, Taranto and other affected areas, also arriving in the province of Bari. What happened is very serious, taking into account that in ten years we have gone from an area of 25 hectares affected by the bacterium to the current 750 hectares. “The olive growers of Puglia have placed great trust in this Government”, comments Sicolo, “for which they hope that Minister Francesco Lollobrigida will be able to appoint a Commissioner as soon as possible who will make a breakthrough on contrast measures, resources, replanting and actions for regeneration olive growing because a real breakthrough is needed to put an end to a problem that is decimating our olive growing".
Meanwhile, news arrives that from a study by the University of Annunzio of Chieti they could come new therapies to fight Xylella. Conditional obligatory for us of theOlive News that we have heard too many about this olive-growing tragedy to be enchanted. A piece of news that still deserves to be disclosed (ready to highlight future concrete findings), perhaps without those triumphalistic tones with which it was disseminated by the agencies. Let's talk about a new nano material – named “ArgiriumSUNc” – which would be able to act effectively on many bacterial and fungal pathogens, responsible for many pathologies both in the medical field and in phytopathology. The new nanomaterial was characterized and synthesized for the first time stable in aqueous solution in the laboratories of the da University a team of researchers coordinated by Dr. Luca Scotti (in the picture) who has been dealing with new materials for years and who carries out his research activity at the University's Department of Medical, Oral and Biotechnological Sciences.
The effectiveness of this material, they assure, has been proven by various in vitro experiments and now also preclinical and clinical ones, involving other research centers scattered throughout the country: the universities of Teramo, Rome Tor Vergata and Perugia.ArgiriumSUNc, the new nano compound resulting from this research, required five years of experimentation and checks in order to understand its effectiveness and possible toxicity: the results have been published in the major scientific journals of the sector such as “Scientific report of nature” with a high impact in the sector of both nano-materials and experiments in the microbiological, phytopathological and biomedical fields. The head researcher dares: “We can rightly believe that from today Xylella, this pathology that worries olive growers so much, can be effectively treated and that ArgiriumSUNc can offer a real and concrete solution to the problem”.
