Australia’s 2026 olive harvest has begun, with early reports showing strong fruit size and the first varieties now arriving at processing facilities.
An in-depth guide to CO₂ chilling injury in fresh olives, explaining physiological disorders, storage risks, cultivar sensitivity, and practical strategies to minimise postharvest quality loss.
Learn how olive fruit retention force (FRF) and detachment index (DI) guide ripening, harvest timing, and mechanical efficiency while reducing fruit loss. Fruit retention (or detachment/removal) force is the tensile force needed to separate an olive from its pedicel at the abscission zone (AZ). It’s typically reported in newtons (N) or grams-force (gf) i.e. 1 N ≈ 102 gf. Most gauges measure a direct pull, but torsion and bending also matter in..
Mechanical trunk shakers have transformed olive harvesting in modern olive groves. A new study: Damping behaviour of olive trees under trunk shaking (Ghonimy, Alharbi & Ibrahim, 2025) provides growers with the first detailed breakdown of how vibration energy moves through olive trees and the soil beneath them.
The findings reveal how attachment height, trunk diameter, and the tree-soil interaction determine whether ...
Trunk shakers apply forced vibration at the tree trunk, which propagates through the canopy and detaches ripe olives. However, the success of this process isn't solely dependent on the machine’s frequency or power. The geometry of the tree itself... particularly the inclination angle of its branches... plays a pivotal role in determining how efficiently that vibration moves through the canopy.....
As the world's leading olive oil producer, Spain plays a pivotal role in the global market, contributing around 40-50% of worldwide supply. After a challenging period marked by droughts and extreme temperatures that halved production in recent years, the 2024/2025 harvest signaled a strong recovery. Now, with the 2025/2026 crop year on the horizon, industry experts and producers are optimistic about sustained growth. This article explores the ...
