[HN Gopher] Xylella Fastidiosa: A crisis brewing in Europe's oli...
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Xylella Fastidiosa: A crisis brewing in Europe's olive groves
Author : indigodaddy
Score : 104 points
Date : 2024-12-09 21:29 UTC (1 days ago)
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| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Cases like these build support for indoor farming if externalized
| costs of black swan events and pesticides are incorporated into
| the cost calculation.
|
| Outdoors wins always from a power efficiency standpoint, but
| disease can flip the balance.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| > The most practical strategy, for now, is to plant olive
| varieties that are naturally resistant to Xylella fastidiosa to
| prevent future outbreaks and minimize potential losses.
|
| It seems rather to be yet another argument for polycropping and
| taking care of genetic variety and adapting to local
| conditions, instead of trying even harder to hammer nature into
| a grid.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree. Biodiversity in agriculture is severely lacking. The
| good news is that we have heritage seeds. However, we don't
| have the capacity to ramp that stock up quickly. The main
| issue is that farmers will choose the best seeds for the
| current conditions/risks. This leads to a consensus winning
| variety. There's no benefit to the farmer to plant "inferior"
| seeds for an event that has yet to happen.
| Terr_ wrote:
| A "biodiversity subsidy" sounds like a kind of
| agricultural-assistance I could get behind, although the
| devil is always in the details.
|
| One concern that comes to mind: If a certain variation is
| more-susceptible to a particular disease or pest, and
| becomes a beachhead or reservoir--fun mixed metaphors there
| --for infection.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, this would probably be best served by some
| biosecurity program at the USDA or a handful of
| universities.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Reading more, there appear to be just two cultivars naturally
| resistant to Xylella fastidiosa.
|
| Spain already grows hundreds of cultivars of olive trees,
| though only three are used for the bulk of the olive oil. So
| replacing those with resistant ones would reduce diversity.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| A different monoculture is not the solution to the problem
| of a monoculture. Replacing all of them with the resistant
| ones would reduce biodiversity (perhaps the resistant ones
| are susceptible to other diseases, perhaps the nonresistant
| ones will at some point be resistant to a new disease). See
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture
|
| The main problem with polyculture being that it assumes
| local farmers are smart and cunning individuals who find
| (perhaps unorthodox) solutions in constrained, complex and
| realistic environments because their livelihoods depend on
| it (or because they got an interesting idea and couldn't
| let it go), and who know more about their challenges than
| random hn commenters like me, instead of being mindless
| drones that can be replaced/interchanged at will by central
| overlords with complete control over the panopticon food
| factory.
| culi wrote:
| Disease is not a problem if we stop practicing monocultures.
| The added labor costs associated with polyculture still end up
| being less than the added energy costs of indoor farming
| adalacelove wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| While the focus has been on olives, the bacterium's ability
| to infect such a broad spectrum of plants makes it an
| agricultural nightmare, particularly in regions where
| multiple crops are grown in close proximity.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They aren't talking about polyculture as proximity to other
| types of crops. They are talking about the limited genetic
| diversity in within a specific type of crop. This issue is
| very common. Another example is the Cavendish banana. I
| believe the article advocates for planting resistant
| varieties.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >They aren't talking about polyculture as proximity to
| other types of crops. They are talking about the limited
| genetic diversity in within a specific type of crop.
|
| I know that not everyone is a horticulturalist. Allow me
| to explain why this is dumb. It is true that for a crop
| like tomatoes, you might just grow any old mongrel seed,
| and that the tomatoes will still produce... even if
| yields are off 30% or 40%. Monocropping in that case is
| about increasing yields, not making the impossible
| possible.
|
| This is simply not true with most orchard tree crops (or
| grapes, or about half the sorts of food crops you've
| enjoyed all your life). An apple, for instance isn't just
| a monocrop of closely related sibling plants... each Fuji
| or Pink Lady apple you've eaten is a genetic clone of any
| other of that type. They are literally cloned through
| grafting (and sometimes rooted cuttings). If we want to
| get really technical, each tree is technically a chimera,
| with only the crown being Pink Lady, the low trunk and
| roots will be something like M.111 (another variety that
| you don't eat it's fruit). Hell, sometimes there's even a
| third type in the middle of the two called an
| "interstock". What would happen if you didn't clone apple
| varieties? You wouldn't eat apples anymore. Every apple
| tree would produce its own kind of fruit, some might be
| just as good as Fuji or Yellow Delicious or any of the
| others you're familiar with. But there'd only ever be one
| tree of that. Apples do not grow true to seed. Some would
| be little golf-ball-sized crab apples. Others would be
| completely tasteless. Or dry and pithy. Or nasty-looking
| things that always split while growing. Maybe farmers
| would still grow them as feed for hogs (but productivity
| is also a genetic trait, and you've just struck a death-
| blow against having a large number of highly productive
| trees). Maybe they'd be grown to make alcohol (more
| applejack or cider than apfelwein I'd think).
|
| But apples as a desert fruit would be gone.
|
| And it's like this for many, many crops. Hell, even
| something like wheat... you can complain about
| monocropping, but these new varieties that they use
| actually resist diseases better (not to mention prevented
| who knows how many famines through increased yield). This
| is the argument of someone who whines about GMO crops and
| shops at Whole foods, a certain political type whose
| preferred policies seem designed to just make food more
| expensive and scarce.
|
| >Another example is the Cavendish banana.
|
| There are plenty of banana cultivars... few of them of
| the sort that people in the developed world enjoy. It's
| the same problem as all of the other. But for Cavendish
| (and a tiny handful of other varieties), you'd have no
| bananas at all.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yes, these are all things I know.
|
| You bring up apples and other orchard fruits. Yes, in
| production you want things like uniformity and yield. But
| from a long term survival standpoint, you want some
| diversity, such as through preservation of heritage
| varieties or allowing some seeds to grow and selecting
| from them. Otherwise, you end up with a very short list
| of possible options when faced with new diseases. You
| need some genetic pool to select resistant rootstock
| from. It also prevents things like genetic and epigenetic
| adaptations to the environment (see progressive cold
| hardening). Of course the economics of it discourages
| farmers from selecting currently inferior varieties for
| crops. But perhaps a biosecurity program could fill that
| gap.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >But from a long term survival standpoint, you want some
|
| You don't get to have that. It's just not an option. All
| these polyploidals do not work like that. You can have
| uniformity (which people want anyway), or you can have
| fruit that's so bad no one wants to bother growing it.
| There's no middle ground.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Haha nice false dichotomy.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Monoculture was not the cause. From TFA:
|
| "The origin of the Xylella outbreak in Italy can be traced
| back to a single coffee plant imported from Central America
| in 2008. Researchers found that the bacterium in the infected
| coffee plant adapted to thrive in olive trees, setting the
| stage for the crisis that would unfold over the next decade.
| By 2015, the disease had spread beyond Apulia, affecting
| regions across France, Spain, and Portugal. The rapid spread
| of this bacterium has left scientists and farmers alike
| scrambling for solutions."
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Wonder if you could robot automate indoor gardening or
| beekeeping.
|
| As someone who strongly dislikes bees, but loves honey and its
| products I find myself wondering how to automate beekeeping so
| I can not interact with bees.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| They once built a robot bee that could waggle-dance inside
| the hive. The bees eventually started listening to it. You
| could put on an Oculus, and go dance-talk to them remotely.
| There are like 5 words in their grammar with which to
| communicate one idea... where to find the nectar.
|
| But the truth of the matter is they need someone to babysit
| and check up on them once in awhile. Make sure they're free
| of mites, that the colony isn't going to be unbalanced (that
| they might need a new queen, if something went wrong, or
| there's not enough brood in the comb). Wear a beekeeping
| suit. No reason to dislike them, they appreciate flowers,
| make candy, and twerk-to-talk. Seems like they're the good
| guys.
| Carrok wrote:
| Indoor gardening is very much highly automated already.
| yyuugg wrote:
| Have you spent any times with bees? Beekeeping really changed
| my opinions on bees. They are quite industrious and very
| gentle.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| This will sound like bullshit... but I have three indoor olives
| at the moment. Two were ordered as rooted cuttings a couple
| months back, under grow lights and getting a decent amount of
| new growth. A third was on the clearance rack at Lowes, it's a
| big bigger. But, before they get 3ft or so, they're going to
| have to go outside. They're already too big for my not-
| unimpressive grow lights.
|
| Olive oil's already like $50 for a gallon can (and not much
| cheaper even if you eat the trash stuff). Were olive orchards
| inside, no one like you or me would ever get to enjoy them
| again.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Trim them into bonsai.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I've never been good at that. Knowing exactly how much to
| trim, and when, is some sort of psychic power. My plant
| telepathy's just weak.
|
| That said, olives would probably work well for it,
| considering their growth habit. Only as art, mind you, my
| wife and I'd fight over the one olive per year for the
| celebratory dinner salad.
| Maciek416 wrote:
| I've studied bonsai with a professional who trained in
| Japan for a number of years. Bonsai is a well-developed
| professional craft that should be learned from people who
| already know it rather than guessed at from absolute
| first principles (or from completely
| illiterate/nonsensical web slop, whether AI or not), as
| most beginners unfortunately try to do.
|
| The known-good techniques that produced long-term bonsai
| don't in any way whatsoever resemble the naive approach
| of "trimming" in the hedge pruning sense. This (along
| with the mistake of growing indoors) is why the vast
| majority of the public concludes bonsai is a dark art /
| impossible. Guessing at bonsai is like throwing rocks at
| a computer hoping that C code will just "happen" somehow.
|
| If you have a sun-facing outdoor garden, know what the
| term "binary tree" means, and can describe a tree in
| terms of a data structure (nodes etc), then you have
| within you the ability to learn bonsai for realsies if
| you make contact with people who do it in real life.
| Olive bonsai trees are relatively common in
| mediterranean-climate bonsai scenes, like that of
| California's bonsai scene:
| https://bonsaitonight.com/2023/10/20/preparing-an-olive-
| for-...
|
| Trees like this are not grown on kitchen counters or in
| living rooms. _Maybe_ in a world-beating cannabis tent,
| but the hassle is extreme, and (going back to the topic
| of this thread), fighting diseases in the indoor
| cultivation environment is much much harder than outside.
| jnmandal wrote:
| Nailed it. Indoor farming doesn't work at scale for tree
| crops. The soviets had quasi indoor "pineapple pit" style
| plantations of citruses in far north of their effective
| ranges. Imagine something like a subterranean greenhouse in
| trench format -- yet even in a planned economy that was
| hardly a viable project.
|
| But the Spanish monks who gave gave California olive trees
| were on to something. If you plant enough new olives from
| seed then you can eventually find and develop a variety that
| grows well in your particular climate. This obviates the need
| for sheltering the tree much or at all.
|
| No offense mate but I bet if we accounted for the cost of
| your grow light setup your eventual harvest might could be
| some of the most expensive olives in the world. No hate
| though, I've got an olive tree indoors too (though just in a
| window).
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >If you plant enough new olives from seed then you can
| eventually find and develop a variety that grows well in
| your particular climate.
|
| Yeh, "Mission" olives. One of the cuttings is that.
| Allegedly one of the most cold-hardy cultivars. It might
| survive outside with our winters (yay global warming) if I
| get the trunk to about 4" before it has to make its own way
| outdoors. Hoping anyway.
|
| >No offense mate but I bet if we accounted for the cost of
| your grow light setup your eventual harvest might could be
| some of the most expensive olives in the world.
|
| Oh, for sure. These are my end-of-the-world olive trees.
| Mostly keeping them inside now because it's winter.
| Starting in March, they should be able to go outside until
| Halloween or so. I should be able to get more cuttings off
| of each (Mission, Pendolino, Arbequina), and make several
| dozen trees. But some will always be indoors as mother
| trees for more cuttings.
|
| And yeh pineapples are absurd. But my daughter just finally
| nailed getting the tops to root... putting them in a jar of
| water just rots the crown here (air quality, humidity?
| dunno). She dried one out until it looked dead, then
| trimmed the bottom a bit more, and there was nice living
| tissue, a pretty yellow. That was able to be put to
| moisture, and it rooted in a few weeks. The greenhouse
| square footage for something like "one pineapple a month"
| would be on the order of 350sqft, and we're unclear if they
| can be staggered. Sometimes these plants decide to all
| bloom at once, even if some are overdue and others
| premature.
|
| We have a list of "things we can't live without if the rest
| of you monkeys shit the bed and and can't sell it to us
| anymore".
|
| If anyone knows anybody at Foundation Plant Services at UCB
| and would like to do me a favor, private message me? Just
| need someone to put in a word for me.
| jnmandal wrote:
| Nice. Good luck. It sounds like we are up to similar
| things. Its nice to see that. I wish there were more
| forums for this specific type of discussion.
|
| > We have a list of "things we can't live without if the
| rest of you monkeys shit the bed and and can't sell it to
| us anymore".
|
| Not trying to be obtuse about this because I get it...
| but if we end up in this situation, I think olives and
| pineapples will be one of our least concerns. Both are
| great plants to grow and experiment with. I also grow
| olives, fruits, all kinds of berries, etc. But due to the
| rather interconnected nature of both the global economy
| and the global climate system, it may be that if we ever
| begin to see items like that in widespread failure we
| could simultaneously be overwhelmed w/ larger problems.
| Lets say massive food price inflation, isolated
| famines/shortages, and ultimately total base calories for
| our diet.
|
| So while I don't disagree with your sentiment at all I
| would just say that I hope you have things like grains
| and staples on that list. Sweet potatoes are a relatively
| nutrient-rich and calorie dense food that are technically
| perennial and can be grown in similar format to how you
| describe your olives and pineapples (take them indoors in
| winter, use some greenhouses to extend season, etc).
| Bananas are similarly useful if you are in the right
| climate. In the biosphere 2 experiment, sweet potatoes
| constituted the bulk of their diet (source:
| https://ecotechnics.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/2011/08/Advances-...). In a worst case
| scenario we might even end up in victory garden type
| situation and need to plant corn, beans, etc wherever we
| have space to do so.
|
| > anybody at Foundation Plant Services at UCB
|
| As for this, I'm not in your region so I have no
| connections there but I highly recommend just finding a
| few names and emailing them about your project. I've done
| similar with people all over the and I normally do get a
| reply. Most recently an Israeli horticulturalist I had
| read about on HN responded and gave me germination tips
| for some trees I am growing after I emailed her.
|
| Happy gardening mate. :)
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Not trying to be obtuse about this because I get it...
| but if we end up in this situation, I think olives and
| pineapples will be one of our least concerns.
|
| Lower priority sure. But, people who only pay attention
| to the highest priorities are likely to be miserable even
| if they make it.
|
| >So while I don't disagree with your sentiment at all I
| would just say that I hope you have things like grains
| and staples on that list.
|
| I have things like Megasphaera hexanoica and Clostridium
| acetobutylicum on the list. Grains are there, but the
| truth of the matter is until I can secure acreage that
| stuff's put on hold. Am trying to find one of the old
| pull-type combines, some other equipment (I have storage
| if I can buy them now).
|
| >but I highly recommend just finding a few names and
| emailing them about your project.
|
| They're not interested in talking to me. Their minimum
| order's a little high for a cultivar of pistachio I need
| for rootstock, doesn't seem to be any other option. One
| or two nurseries will sell a single sapling for $70 or
| so, but multiplying that into the 20 or 30 trees I want
| to start with will take a long time. They sell seed for
| $1 each, but their minimum order's a bit absurd. Told me
| "that's just two pieces of budwood to get you to the
| minimum"... what am I going to do with budwood when I'm
| buying rootstock seed right this moment? My current plan
| is to just get terebinthus and vera seed, grow both, and
| hybridize them myself. Only a 10 yr setback, shouldn't be
| a problem.
| jnmandal wrote:
| Seems like you are working on a lot of cool projects. You
| keeping a blog or socials or anything like that ? Would
| be cool to follow along.
|
| I am doing some similar projects. I've got some acreage
| planted with chestnuts and a few other select trees.
| Going on three years now of planting. I haven't done a
| good job documenting things but putting together a talk
| about agriculture so maybe that will change.
|
| > Their minimum order's a little high for a cultivar of
| pistachio I need for rootstock, doesn't seem to be any
| other option.
|
| Sounds like you need some friends/neighbors/comrades to
| throw in with you on a group order. I have been in a
| similar place myself; I've roped a lot of friends into
| these schemes now. Last month I had 7 lbs of chestnuts
| sent to my buddy while I was out of the country haha.
| jnmandal wrote:
| No offense but that is bunk.
|
| To grow thousands of olive trees indoors would be nearly
| impossible. Perennial crops like this need huge amounts of soil
| for their root systems, and to replace the amount of olives
| with indoor plantation would require a massive square footage
| of greenhouses.
|
| Not to mention that diseases like this can just as easily
| transmit indoors. Look into the American chestnut blight if you
| don't believe me. There almost no way to grow a tree isolated
| from the blight.
|
| The only viable solution in cases like these is a genetic one.
| In this case, we can actually top the olive and graft a disease
| resistant variety onto the rootstock. In some cases you may
| have to actually develop an entirely new tree from scratch and
| replant.
|
| That is why continuous research into plant genetics and
| breeding is so extremely important for the continuation of
| human society.
| petergs wrote:
| Indoor farming is far from immune to disease. Infected inputs
| (seed, substrate) are just one route to contamination. See for
| example: https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/bowery-farming-
| collapse-...
| pezezin wrote:
| I am from Spain. We have 340 million olive trees on 28 000 km2
| of farm land. Please tell me how we are going to do it indoors.
|
| Example of an olive grove in the province of Jaen, that alone
| produces 20% of the olive oil in the world:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Ja%C3%A9n_(Spain)#...
| lioeters wrote:
| That panoramic view of the olive garden is magnificent. I
| didn't know olive trees are being cultivated on such huge
| plots of land, covering fields and hills as far as the eyes
| can see.
|
| Trees seem unsuitable for indoor farming, since they need
| tons of soil and sunlight. Also taking years to grow and
| mature. Indoor farming in general seem unsuitable for Spain,
| where there is an abundance of land and sun.
|
| Searching on this topic I learned that green houses are
| popular in some regions like Almeria for growing fruits and
| vegetables. I guess green houses are something between indoor
| and outdoor farming.
|
| > Spain is currently the world's third largest tomato
| exporter, and up to 60% of those tomatoes come from the
| province of Almeria.
|
| > The region has around 30,000 hectares of land under
| cultivation, the majority of which is under plastic. It is
| also the most rapidly desertifying region in the country.
| KSteffensen wrote:
| To me that panoramic view is scary, not magnificent. It's a
| monoculture desert. There is no life there, other than the
| very carefully cultivated one organism.
| pezezin wrote:
| Something interesting about the greenhouses of Almeria is
| that they are one of the few human constructions easily
| visible from space.
| rvba wrote:
| Why nobody is investing serious money into bacteriophages?
|
| It seems only russia shows some interest in them - ans mostly for
| military purposes
| donavanm wrote:
| IIRC the most usage is romania and bulgaria(?), not russia.
|
| As to why not, they dont "scale out" like other generalized
| pharmaceuticals or medicine. Phages need a bunch of patient
| specific diagnostics and revision to be effective against the
| specific target. Thats why you see people fly to romania for a
| month of treatment, and not order the bacteriophages _from_
| romania.
| biotinker wrote:
| This isn't terribly different than the latest precision
| medicine in the US. For example, drugs like Keytruda can only
| be used in the presence or absence of certain genetic markers
| in the tumor. Most cutting edge immunotherapy is similar;
| they require patient specific diagnoses and sometimes
| revisions.
|
| These therapies are the largest focus of cancer research in
| the US right now with enormous funding behind them, despite
| having the same weaknesses you point out as bacteriophages.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Do bacteriophages work against cancer?
| tokai wrote:
| Not in themselves. But they can apparently be used as a
| delivery mechanism in cancer related gene therapy.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9697857/
| anitil wrote:
| > Thats why you see people fly to romania for a month of
| treatment
|
| I had no idea people did this!
| ricardobayes wrote:
| What kind of diseases do people have who go for such
| treatments?
| razakel wrote:
| The cases I've heard of were all antibiotic-resistant
| infections.
| akuchling wrote:
| "The Good Virus", by Tom Ireland, is an entertaining book
| about bacteriophage therapies, their history, and why
| they're difficult to scale up.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Now I wonder, how do you fly to Romania while infected with
| MRSA? Med evac only, or can you board a commercial flight?
| rob74 wrote:
| Well in this case the bacterium is (accounting for mutations
| which might happen) more or less the same, not some
| antibiotic-resistant "super-bug". But I guess most phage
| research has gone into phages that attack bacteria which
| cause disease in humans, not in trees, so some further
| research would be needed? And such research seems to be
| indeed going on:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3911242/ "We report
| the isolation and characterization of the first virulent
| phages for X. fastidiosa, siphophages Sano and Salvo and
| podophages Prado and Paz, with a host range that includes
| Xanthomonas spp."
| cyberax wrote:
| Plenty of companies research phages. They're just not that
| great for practical purposes because they are often strain-
| specific. Bacteria also evolve resistance to them easily.
|
| The USSR's "research" was not great either. It mostly consisted
| of practical methods of evaluating environmental samples and
| concentrating/purifying phages.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >It seems only russia shows some interest in them
|
| Used to show interest. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union,
| most of that's just been a dumpsterfire.
| hulitu wrote:
| Because you need to fight the cause, not the effect.
| trhway wrote:
| As bugs is the main vector, birds immediately come to mind, and
| of course quick googling brings significant recent bird
| population decline with among other reasons (chemicals, etc.)
| this destruction of birds and their nesting:
|
| "Nighttime harvesting. Machines used to vacuum olives from trees
| at night can suck in and kill birds. This practice is used to
| preserve the olives' flavor, but it's a recent development that's
| harmful to birds."
|
| It is kind of like getting rid of cats and after that wondering
| why so many rats and the plague, or the Cultural Revolution
| famine after that mass extermination of birds there.
| lovemenot wrote:
| >> or the Cultural Revolution famine after that mass
| extermination of birds
|
| Sorry for the nitpick. I believe you are referring to the Four
| Pests campaign, which was part of the Great Leap Forward
| (1950s) rather than the Cultural Revolution (1960s)
| trhway wrote:
| Thank you. Shame on me. I must be sent for a week to a
| reeducation camp.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| If you knew the right answer but made a small mistake, then
| it's not a question of education but of concentration.
| Surely there must a special camp for that too.
| hulitu wrote:
| > It is kind of like getting rid of cats and after that
| wondering why so many rats and the plague
|
| or recently, in EU, we must kill the wolf, but the deer is
| eating the small trees in the forests.
| passwordoops wrote:
| But insect populations are also declining precipitously (e.g,
| 1), so killing birds might not have that much of an impact
|
| 1. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118
| trhway wrote:
| you're comparing global decline of insects to removing birds
| and nests from those olive groves. It is like comparing
| global wealth growth to your failure to pay rent when you get
| laid off.
| fbnbr wrote:
| There's some fascinating research relating to this happening at
| UC Berkeley's Almeida Lab
| (https://nature.berkeley.edu/almeidalab/) on grapevine diseases,
| particularly relevant to the wine industry in Northern
| California.
|
| 1. The lab, led by Professor Rodrigo Almeida, is studying
| economically important grape diseases, focusing on Grapevine
| leafroll disease and Grapevine red blotch disease [1].
|
| 2. They're developing an AI tool for fast and accurate disease
| identification in vineyards, which could be a game-changer for
| disease management.
|
| 3. Their work combines molecular biology, ecology, and
| bioinformatics, using advanced techniques like genomics.
|
| 4. A recent study led by Kai Blaisdell showed that mealybugs
| efficiently transmit Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 3 under
| field conditions, with disease symptoms appearing throughout the
| plant one year after infection [2].
|
| 5. Their focus seems to be more on understanding and managing
| plant diseases using various molecular and ecological approaches
| [3].
|
| This research is crucial for the wine industry, especially in
| regions like Northern California. It's not quite "genomics on the
| brink of the discovery what was penicillin through crispr", but
| it's still cutting-edge work that could have significant impacts
| on grape cultivation and wine production.
|
| References: [1] https://nature.berkeley.edu/almeidalab/research/
| [2] https://nature.berkeley.edu/almeidalab/category/lab-news/ [3]
| https://nature.berkeley.edu/almeidalab/publications/
| swiftcoder wrote:
| The last news article I found about this was 5 years ago[1], have
| there been any significant developments since?
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52234561
| ganzuul wrote:
| The price of olive oil has gone up significantly.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I guess I'm confused that the projections in TFA are largely
| in line with the projections in the BBC article from 5 years
| ago. I'd expect _something_ to have changed in that time
| (whether for better /worse), and it makes me suspicious that
| TFA is recycling 5 year old conclusions rather than
| presenting novel data
| adrian_b wrote:
| True.
|
| I am usually buying the cheapest extra-virgin olive oil
| available (in Europe), and its price has increased by more
| than 50% in comparison with a couple of years ago.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Try Kali Agri. Extremely high polyphenols and all around
| excellent. Free shipping to US, but not sure about if that
| applies for the Europe store:
|
| https://eu.kaliagri.it/collections/kali-eu
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Olive leccino my beloved. It doesn't look too expensive,
| not cheap at all, but not so expensive
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Yeah definitely not cheap like "this sucks" but extremely
| reasonable price for pretty high quality and high
| polyphenol olive oil imo. I like it a lot.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| If possible, try more expensive varieties as well. In some
| cases they're so strong you'll need less oil for a better
| result (or in my case, same amount of oil but for a
| heavenly experience). If you can find some online farmers,
| look for 5lt tins of oil, this way you'll save a bit. I
| just looked how much would be to buy oil in Tuscany where I
| live and get it shipped to France and it almost doubles the
| price, so I guess buying online from italy is a no no
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Have no idea why you are getting downvoted. You
| definitely do need to pay more than average for a decent
| olive oil. And if you look, there are plenty of good
| options for high quality and high polyphenol oil at
| reasonable prices. Just have to dig. r/oliveoil is a good
| place to start as there are some good discussions and
| people like to post their finds. Be aware that there are
| lots of people in that subreddit that kinda sorta shill
| their own olive oil. Usually they are excellent oils but
| often quite expensive. Again, you get what you pay for
| for the most part.
| gewu333 wrote:
| https://www.everymansci.com/economy/why-olive-oil-prices-
| are...
| m0llusk wrote:
| Potentially interesting how increasing biodiversity in cultivated
| environments with a range of trees and cover crops can increase
| resilience, but this thing attacks so many plants that even a
| biodiverse environment is likely to remain highly vulnerable.
| nickserv wrote:
| Biodiversity should also include various varieties of the same
| species. In some cases it's even interesting to have wild
| varieties of cultivated fruit trees simply for better
| pollination.
|
| As indicated in the article, there are olive varieties immune
| to the disease, so it would make a difference.
| undersuit wrote:
| >even interesting to have wild varieties of cultivated fruit
| trees simply for better pollination.
|
| Love me some pears.
| nicodds wrote:
| A voice from the field here (Puglia, southern Italy). I can
| assure you that the landscape has changed drastically in a
| decade. Where a few years ago you could see immense expanses of
| green, now you see a ghostly landscape. It's incredible. Years
| and years have been spent inconclusively, both by politicians and
| by investigators, who have also wasted time with conspiracy
| theories.
|
| Only a few people have replanted olive trees using species
| resistant to Xylella.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| (I'm Italian)
|
| We also had anti scientific movements that opposed to the
| destruction of olive trees in a radius big enough to prevent
| the bacteria to spread to other plants. Farmers also tried to
| delay the process of trees eradications by packing the judicial
| courts with appeals. Some singers (such as Al bano, I think
| caparezza as well) also expressed to listen to the farmers and
| to not touch the olives, when scientists has been saying for
| years "listen, we don't have a cure, we can't cure the plants,
| we can only contain it before it spreads to wider areas".
|
| This anti scientific behavior and this thinking of "farmers
| might know better than scientist" that is not only false, but
| dangerous when expressed by a public figure such as a famous
| singer, are what I were complaining about in a different
| comment about people being ignorant in scientific fields in
| italy and almost being proud of it [1]
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376014#42376351
| pfdietz wrote:
| Now we need GMO resistance to this bacterium and the
| shitstorm will be complete!
| willyt wrote:
| I wonder what the legal implications are of ignoring a
| disease until it spreads to your neighbour's farm. Can the
| neighbour sue for negligence or something?
| gpderetta wrote:
| you would need a functional judicial system for that.
| gewu333 wrote:
| i wonder if Xylella has already spread to beyond Europe? Are
| there reports of it being a problem in the middle east and north
| africa as well?
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Something I never understood is why trees seem to be ill so
| rarely. There is a gazillion infectious agents on Earth from
| viruses to fungi, mammals are barely keeping up even with our
| adaptive immune system and fever. Plants lack all of that and yet
| some trees live for centuries or millennia when undisturbed.
|
| I realize that are many factors skewing the observation: trees
| may be sick without us noticing, most of the trees die very early
| and we observe ones that get mature, some trees are in fact
| visibly sick etc. What I don't know is if these factors combined
| explain it all or not. My gut feeling tells me that without an
| adaptive immune response trees must be sick way more often than
| we see, but I have no proof.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| They are sick a lot. In the United States, chestnut blight
| killed 4 billion trees over 40 years. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight
| zdragnar wrote:
| I imagine the hard walls of plant cells helps keep bacteria and
| virii at bay, but there's plenty of fungi that infest trees.
| Oak wilt is a rather pernicious local threat.
|
| The programming language Rust is named after a type of fungus
| that attacks plants.
|
| It's out there, but trees don't run around screaming, so it's
| not something that people tend to notice.
| stevekemp wrote:
| Dutch Elm Disease killed a whole bunch of trees in Edinburgh,
| Scotland.
|
| I know a lot of the old Elm trees in Princes Street Gardens,
| beneath Edinburgh Castle, were replaced by Limes. Of course the
| problem is more widespread than than just the one city, or the
| one country:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_elm_disease
| SpicyUme wrote:
| It may be that you don't see the illness/infections unless you
| are looking for them or until the trees die off in sufficient
| numbers. I look for interesting things growing near me while
| walking or hiking and around here I see galls from various
| insects like wasps and aceria, leaves covered in bright
| gymnosporangium rusts, and colonies of wooly adelgids. In the
| summer the deciduous trees tend to get powdery mildew, and I
| know there are some more harmful fungi in the region which seem
| to be damaging living trees in a way that is not common, but
| also not new.
|
| Sometimes you can see tress dripping sap from cuts or other
| damage, which I understand to be part of how they defend
| against disease. My parents had a tree that I remember dripped
| for many years before falling over in a storm. They also had a
| cherry tree that had a ring of dried sap bubbles on the stump
| of a large pruned branch.
|
| I found this which discusses the compartmentalization model of
| tree immune systems: https://botany.one/2019/09/trees-fight-
| infections-by-buildin...
| emporas wrote:
| I think mr. Dykstra [1] (not Dijkstra), needs to be more well
| known. I have some olive trees, just a hundred of them, not much,
| but some are monsters. There are several mistakes farmers make,
| that over the long run compromise the health of the plant.
|
| See also [2], somewhere there he mentions California lemon
| production, but it may be in another webinar.
|
| The proposal of Italian gov to kill many other plants around,
| stems right out of the Dark Ages. Governments of course have
| proven repeatedly how well they understand complex systems, Covid
| was still hunted down after years of spreading to the population,
| while i have calculated using just my mind in 10 minutes, that
| given an incubation rate of 2 days, 63 days maximum and it has
| spread to every person on the planet.
|
| Anyway, we are gonna replace governments with 100 lines of code
| soon, and the problem will be solved.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEeIJcGxo00 [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnNOvA3diDU
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