How to reverse the desert of the olive grove in Spain

The olive grove in southern Spain has become a "desert" without vegetation cover or microbial activity in the soil, a situation that a European-funded research project seeks to reverse. The Soil O-Live initiative has received 7 million euros from the European Union to study the effect of agricultural management on the health of the soils of Mediterranean olive groves and its effect on the quality of olive oil. The coordinator of the project, Antonio José Manzaneda, details to Efeagro that in a first stage they will make a diagnosis of the state of the soil, which he suspects is "very bad due to the use of phytosanitary products and for purely geographical reasons", since the olive grove It is located in highly erodible areas. The also professor of Ecology at the University of Jaén affirms that one only has to walk through the olive groves of Jaén and Córdoba to realize that they are "an absolute desert, without vegetation cover and with little microbial activity", which depends a ...