BIOVEXO goes to Mallorca II
2nd part of the report from BIOVEXO trip to Mallorca on Dec. 1-3rd, 2021.
Mallorca – an island of diversity
As an introduction to Mallorca and its diversity, two pictures illustrate it all:
BIOVEXO mission
As a PR slogan for Mallorca goes, Mallorca has it all. That includes unfortunately also the infection of its agricultural plants and trees by the deadly bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. And that’s the reason why BIOVEXO is present and active in Mallorca.
BIOVEXO develops solutions to limit the impact of the disease on the trees affected, as well as to limit the transmitting power of the insects spreading the bacterium. Solutions based on biological products and processes. The consortium comprises 11 partners from research, industry and SMEs, with Mallorca represented by Aimerit.
Aimerit in BIOVEXO
Aimerit is a family farm producing in its orchards numerous kinds of fruits, namely olives, almonds, carob pods as well as honey. Its unique selling point as well as its special focus within BIOVEXO project are ecological farming and protection of biodiversity.
The motivation for Aimerit to join BIOVEXO was quite straightforward and two-fold: Aimerit realized it needed expert support in its facing Xylella, mostly in almonds but unfortunately potentially also more and more in olives, and because of the bio-based nature of the products being developed in BIOVEXO.
BIOVEXO experiments
BIOVEXO is presently running comparative experiments on olive trees on Aimerit’s farm to assess both the preventive and the curative effect of individual BIOVEXO products. 144 trees have been selected for curative treatment and 144 for preventive treatment, always accompanied by untreated control tree samples.
“It’s like a dream […] Treatment effects are clearly visible, compared to untreated trees!” – Pilar Puig
Words of conclusion?
Overall, Pilar believes, it’s important to support trees’ own strength and immunity to fight any disease that might come. This means applying no artificial, chemistry-based products or pesticides, taking good care of the trees including watering, pruning or removing sick branches, and promoting bio-diversity both in the tree genomes and in the insects cohabiting with the trees. Those values are squarely in line with those of the BIOVEXO project
If you’d like to follow the work of the BIOVEXO project and stay up to date on the fight against Xylella, please sign up to our Newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, or Facebook.
