Aristotelis Azariadis is in the midst of an investigation of the effect
of salinity and drought stress on four different olive cultivars, aiming
to determine whether olive trees can be grown where we think they can’t
survive. This is good to know in such places as Crete and North Africa, given a Cretan tradition of watering olive trees with sea water.
Equipped with a master’s degree in Agricultural Science and Biotechnology and finishing a second master’s at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania
(MAICh) in Crete with a thesis based on this experiment, Azariadis
plans to continue for a PhD. He tells me that this experiment may be the
first attempt to grow olive trees in pots in a controlled greenhouse environment without soil.
This
project is supervised by Dr. Panagiotis Kalaitzis, the Studies/Research
Coordinator of the Horticultural Genetics and Biotechnology Department
at MAICh. MAICh is part of the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM).
Since
these olive trees are not growing in real soil, but in an inert
substance (half river sand and half perlite), they are not part of a
real ecosystem. With nothing to hurt these isolated plants, there is no
need for herbicides or pesticides. Ventilation and temperature are
controlled. That simplifies the situation in order to focus on drought and salinity, although it obviously differs from a real world experience for the trees.
Because growing space is limited to 70 trees in the 300 square meter greenhouse at MAICh, four Greek olive varieties were chosen
to test: the resilient Lefkolia and Arvanitolia, the more sensitive
Gaidourolia (whose name is related to the Greek word for donkey), and
the moderately salinity tolerant Koroneiki, which was also chosen for its high quality products and its commercial significance for Greek olive oil production. More