Yikes - olive plants and xylella fastidiosa

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No known cure - from Yahoo/Agence France-Presse:

Growers despair as disease ravages timeless olive groves of Italy
Italian olive grower Federico Manni is at the end of his tether.

"You see this one," he says, waving in the direction of a majestic but diseased olive tree on his property near Gallipoli on the Salento peninsula on Italy's heel.

"It is over one thousand years old. Fires and wars failed to kill it, but that's what xylella is doing."

Manni's wedding pictures were taken underneath this particular tree. And he is filled with dread at the prospect of its imminent demise at the hands of a bacterial infection thought to be behind an outbreak of dessication ravaging the olive groves of this fertile corner of southern Italy.

The extent of the problem:

The reason for Manni's despair is xylella fastidiosa, a deadly bacterial pathogen that has no known cure and, for reasons experts have so far been unable to explain, began infesting olive trees in Salento at the end of 2013.

More than a million trees, 10 percent of Salento's total, are estimated to have been infected in a region where abundant olive groves are synonomous with the timeless landscape.

And it gets worse:

What is clear is that the potential damage is huge: xylella does not harm humans but can kill over 200 types of plant, including fruit trees and grape vines. "It is an environmental disaster," says Manni.

Emphasis mine - its vector are various insects so hard to stop. It is found in the USA where it affects peaches. First spotted in Italy in 2013; arrived in France in 2015. More here and here.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on February 16, 2016 1:15 PM.

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