SOIL O-LIVE

The olive tree is one of the most important oil-producing crops in the Mediterranean region. However, olive growers face many challenges due to intensive agriculture applications, land degradation, biodiversity impoverishment and functionality loss. In this context, the EU-funded SOIL O-LIVE project will implement a set of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects. The aim is to diagnose the environmental situation of olive grove soils on a broad scale. The project will target the most significant areas of olive production in the Mediterranean region. SOIL O-LIVE will analyse the impact of pollution and land degradation on olive groves’ soils, investigate the relationship of soil health status with the quality and safety of olive oil, implement effective soil amendments and ecological restoration practices, and define rigorous ecological thresholds for healthy European olive groves.

After more than fifty years of intensive agriculture application, the environmental situation for many olive groves across the Mediterranean Region is quite dramatic in terms of land degradation, biodiversity impoverishment, functionality loss, which may have already impacted on the quality and safety of olive oil, one of the most important commodities produced in Europe.

Through the implementation of a series of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary WPs, this project will perform the first rigorous diagnostic of the environmental situation of olive groves soils at a broad scale, considering the most important areas of olive production at the Mediterranean Region and its relationships to olive oil quality. Soil O-live aims (i) to analyse the impact of pollution and land degradation on soils from olive groves in terms of multi-biodiversity, ecological function at different levels of organisation and scales; (ii) to investigate the relationship of soil health status with quality and safety of olive oil; (iii) to implement effective soil amendments and ecological restoration practices that promote manifest soil biodiversity and functionality enhancements in permanent Mediterranean olive orchards across its native range of distribution, that should be translated to improvements in olive oil quality and safety; (iv) to define rigorous ecological thresholds that allow to implement future clear norms and regulations in order to design a novel certification for healthy soils in European olive orchards.