The Olive Growing Revolution by Xavier Rius & Jose M Lacarte

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"From the perspective gained thanks more than 16 years of experience in the system, today we can say, without fear of contradiction, the super high density olive groves has seen one of the main revolutions, and farming level, in recent years. Its expansion has gone beyond traditional Olive going countries and is made that new countries include olive growing culture is one of their priority agricultural activities.

The purpose of this book is to offer, in a practical and simple way, information on this new growing model, developing the most appropriate practices, on irrigation, nutrition, pruning, harvesting, et cetera, for the management of super high density olive groves.

The book is conceived as a practical manual for daily use, for olive growers, farm technicians, students, professionals and, in general, all the public with an interest about olive growing".



Prologue....
Due to the low profitability of traditional olive groves, it was started, some 15 years ago, in Catalonia, a new olive grove planting system called super intensive or super high density.  This system consists basically of olive groves with planting density of 2000 trees per hectare that form an axis, with distances between olive trees around 1.5 m, so that they quickly form a hedge. The main advantage of this kind of plantation is a continuous harvest with the over the road machine is driven by a single operator, which represents a drastic reduction in labour. Another great advantage of the new system is it's very quick entry into production and also large crops from the third you which essentially anticipates the return of the investment.

The authors of this publication, Xavier Rius and Jose Manuel Lacarte, Agromillora technicians,  ---- the company promoting the implementation of super high density olive orchards all over the world-----, have a large and accredited experience in carrying out managing this kind of plantations. 

This book is structured in nine CHAPTERS:

• the super high-density system in the world
• setting up a set super high-density olive grove
• varieties
• irrigation
• nutrition
• soil management
• production
• olive quality related aspects
• grove management
• pests & diseases

The chapters about setting up, varieties, oil quality, management and pests and diseases, which are critical factors for the development of this new and peculiar production system, a chapters of particular interest. As an example, only a few of the traditional varieties of showing their suitability to the super high-density system, fact that originated the selection of new less vigorous varieties allowing the passing of the over the row Harvester during an extended period of time. This last aspect, the longevity of these plantations, whose lifespan must go further than 15 years, has to be controlled by the use of low vigorous varieties with an early entry into production in the management of pruning and irrigation techniques which have shown their efficiency to maintain during enough time the productivity of the olive grove.

In conclusion, this book has been written to bring knowledge about this new planting system to those who are looking to expand and look at the needs of integral mechanisation of olive groves. The technology currently used is properly described. With no doubt, the actual expansion of the super high-density system is a guarantee for its consolidation requires new knowledge and experimentation that will set standards of the practices used or modify in the future the techniques presently used.

Dr Luis Rallo & Dr Diego Barranco
University Chair Professor at the Agronomic Engineering School of Córdoba July, 2010.