Baby oil steps

Is anyone looking for resistant material?

That’s what we asked back in August last year, at the height of the Italian Xylella olive plague panic.

Then in March this year there was news of some 10 cultivars being tested. Now comes this:

An experimental olive plot with almost twenty different olive cultivars (24 replicates for each cultivar) has been set last week in the Xylella-infected area of the province of Lecce (Apulia, southern Italy). The 2-years old plants will be exposed to the natural infective vectors throughout the entire project duration. This plot extends the experimental field established in 2015 within a specific EFSA pilot project and including 10 different olive cultivars, whose evaluations will be followed and continued through the project POnTE.

Which is great and all, but why didn’t they put 50 or 100 cultivars out in the first place?

LATER: Oh, and BTW, did you know you can adopt an olive tree?

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