Planting Systems for Modern Olive Growing: Strengths and Weaknesses

The objective of fully mechanizing olive harvesting has been pursued since the 1970s to cope with labor shortages and increasing production costs. Only in the last twenty years, after adopting super-intensive planting systems and developing appropriate straddle machines, a solution seems to have been found. The spread of super-intensive plantings, however, raises serious environmental and social concerns, mainly because of the small number of cultivars that are currently used (basically 2), compared to over 100 cultivars today cultivated on a large scale across the world. Olive growing, indeed, insists on over 11 million hectares. Despite its being located mostly in the Mediterranean countries, the numerous olive growing districts are characterized by deep differences in climate and soil and in the frequency and nature of environmental stress. To date, the olive has coped with biotic and abiotic stress thanks to the great cultivar diversity. Pending that new technologies supporting plant breeding will provide a wider number of cultivars suitable for super-intensive systems, in the short term, new growing models must be developed. New olive orchards will need to exploit cultivars currently present in various olive-growing areas and favor increasing productions that are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. As in fruit growing, we should focus on “pedestrian olive orchards”, based on trees with small canopies and whose top can be easily reached by people from the ground and by machines (from the side of the top) that can carry out, in a targeted way, pesticide treatments, pruning and harvesting.

Cultivar Diversity of Balsam (Impatiens balsamina L.) in Banyumas Regency

Balsam or garden balsam (Impatiens balsamina L.) is a widely grown flowering plant belonging to the family Balsaminaceae. The most conspicuous part to distinguish the balsam is the difference in the flower shape and colors of each cultivar. The purpose of this research is to find out the cultivars diversity of the balsam. The method used in this study was survey with purposive sampling. The variables observed in this study was morphological characteristics including the stem, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. The data obtained were analysed descriptively. The result of this study showed that there were 15 cultivars of I. Balsamina i.e. 'Pinkish White 5 Petal', 'Mix Pink Camellia, 'Pinkish White Camellia, 'Vivid Pink', 'White', 'Light Pink', 'Pinkish White', 'Light Magenta', 'Vivid Red', 'Red Camellia, 'Reddish Camellia, 'Rose Red Camellia, 'Vivid Magenta Camellia, 'Rose Green Camellia, and 'Vivid Pink Camellia’.

Diversity buffers winegrowing regions from climate change losses

Agrobiodiversity—the variation within agricultural plants, animals, and practices—is often suggested as a way to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on crops [S. A. Wood et al., Trends Ecol. Evol. 30, 531–539 (2015)]. Recently, increasing research and attention has focused on exploiting the intraspecific genetic variation within a crop [Hajjar et al., Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 123, 261–270 (2008)], despite few relevant tests of how this diversity modifies agricultural forecasts. Here, we quantify how intraspecific diversity, via cultivars, changes global projections of growing areas. We focus on a crop that spans diverse climates, has the necessary records, and is clearly impacted by climate change: winegrapes (predominantly Vitis vinifera subspecies vinifera). We draw on long-term French records to extrapolate globally for 11 cultivars (varieties) with high diversity in a key trait for climate change adaptation—phenology. We compared scenarios where growers shift to more climatically suitable cultivars as the climate warms or do not change cultivars. We find that cultivar diversity more than halved projected losses of current winegrowing areas under a 2 °C warming scenario, decreasing areas lost from 56 to 24%. These benefits are more muted at higher warming scenarios, reducing areas lost by a third at 4 °C (85% versus 58%). Our results support the potential of in situ shifting of cultivars to adapt agriculture to climate change—including in major winegrowing regions—as long as efforts to avoid higher warming scenarios are successful.