Olive Cultivation in the Southern Hemisphere: Flowering, Water Requirements and Oil Quality Responses to New Crop Environments

TORRES, MARIELA; PIERANTOZZI, PIERLUIGI; SEARLES, PETER; ROUSSEAUX, M. CECILIA; GARCÍA-INZA, GEORGINA; MISERERE, ANDREA; BODOIRA, ROMINA; CONTRERAS, CIBELES; MAESTRI, DAMIÁN

Frontiers in Plant Science

Frontiersin

Año: 2017 vol. 8 p. 1 - 12

Olive (Oleaeuropaea L.) is a crop well adapted to the environmentalconditions prevailing in the Mediterranean Basin.Nevertheless, the increasing international demand for olive oil and tableolives in the last two decades has led to a considerable expansion of olivecultivation in somecountries of the southern hemisphere, notably in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Australia.Many of the new production regions do not have typical Mediterranean climates,and some are located at subtropical latitudes where there is relatively littleinformation about crop function. Thus, the primary objective of this review wasto assess recently published scientific literature onolive cultivation in these regions. The review focuses on three main aspects:a) chilling requirements for flowering, b) water requirements and irrigationmanagement, and c) environmental effects on fruit oil concentration (%) andquality. In many arid and semiarid regions of South America, temperatures arehigh and rainfall is low in the winter and early spring months compared toconditions in much of the Mediterranean Basin. High temperatureshave often been found to have detrimental effects on oliveflowering in many olive cultivars that have been introduced to South America, and a better understanding of chillingrequirements is needed. Lack of rainfall in the winter and spring also hasresulted in an urgent need to evaluate water requirements from the flowerdifferentiation period in the winterto early fruit bearing. Additionally, insome olive growing areas of South America and Australia, high early seasontemperatures affect the timing of phenological events such that the onset ofoil synthesis occurs sooner than in the Mediterranean Basin with most oilaccumulation taking place in the summer when temperatures are very high.Increasing mean daily temperatures have been demonstrated to decrease fruit oilconcentration (%) and negatively affect some aspects of oil quality based onboth correlative field studies and manipulative experiments. From a practicalstandpoint, current findings could be used as approximate tools to determinewhether the temperature conditions in a proposed new growing region areappropriate for achieving sustainable oil productivity and quality.