Last 11th of April, the mayor of Cordoba, Isabel Ambrosio, and the Spanish Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, visited the headquarters of the leading company in the agri-food sector and Spanish innovation, Galpagro, in Santa Cruz (Córdoba).
During the work meeting in which the representatives of the company presented their different lines of work, Teresa Carrillo, director of the R + D + i Department, had the opportunity to explain to the minister what the European Life Resilience project consisted of and what progress had been made so far.
Life Resilience is a project that was born in June 2018 that aims to develop new olive varieties that are resistant to Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterium that since 2013 has already infected various olive plantations in Europe and has negatively impacted environmentally and economically.
Since the project was approved, last June 2018, Life Resilience has already developed the inventory of soils, the Xylella fastidiosa power vector presence inventory, the design of the demonstration trials and the selection of measures to improve productivity and system sustainability.
At the same time, much effort has been invested in analyzing the homogeneity and composition of soil microbiological activity in each of the three demonstration farms used in the project: Carmona (Spain), Alandroal (Portugal) and Pisa (Italy) in order to determine the types of plants that will be used for vegetable covers.
Likewise, the irrigation strategy to be implemented has already been decided, the type of microorganisms that will be added to the soil to improve its resilience and an estimate has been made of the presence of potential vectors and their distribution over time, thus stipulating the methodology to regularly monitor the presence of potential vectors and see their distribution.