Climate change and emerging diseases threaten olive production. Genetic erosion means a high risk since only a 5 % of olive varieties present in the worldwide harvested area are commercially-exploited. Olive genetic resources (GenRes) could offer a solution, but these remain unexploited due to the limited development of pre-breeding activities and the lack of collaboration between germplasm banks and farmers/breeders. GEN4OLIVE is an EU-funded Innovation Action (grant agreement no. 101000427) that aims at increasing olive GenRes mobilisation and encouraging pre-breeding activities.
While the project partners had been working together for one year now, there has never been an in-person consortium meeting due to the pandemic. Last week, for the first time, the partners met in person at the 3rd consortium meeting that was kindly hosted by the University of Cordoba.
FOCOS is responsible for work package 8 (WP8) of this project. WP 8 is concerned with the co-creation and capacity building, involving all relevant stakeholders, creating opportunities and mechanisms to accelerate pre-breeding activities and close knowledge gaps among stakeholders, as well as enhancing the impact of Gen4Olive through capacity building.
The status quo of WP 8 was reported by Bert Popping (FOCOS), Milena Ferrari (BALAM) and Macarena Ureña Mayenco (CTA), highlighting the excellent progress made in this work package. The work package included selecting and confirming the members of the advisory board. We were very pleased to see that some of these members, including the International Olive Oil Council (IOC) were attending the consortium meeting.
Another highlight was the visit to the germplasm bank for olive varieties of the University of Cordoba. Here Pablo Morello, who helped establishing the germplasm bank and is now at IOC explained the process of maintaining, propagating and documenting the different varieties.
Olive tree repository of the University of Cordoba
The next consortium meeting will be held in Marrakesh in 2022.
