Any Olive tree farms in Tamilnadu ?

[shrinivas]

I am planing to start Olive tree farm in 30 acres land near Salem. If any body can help me to provide information of existing olive farms in tamilnadu. I would like to visit the farms before i start my own.

Also, Is this plantations comes under " CARBON CREDIT " ? If so, to whom should we contacted ?

Best regards

Organic Shrini

[sjacob]

Dear Shrinivas,

Which variety of olives are these? I thought olives need wintering climate of atleast between 14 to 22 deg C. Will these trees yield in Tamil Nadu?

[kalyanskanda]

Hi,
From what I have read on the net, Olive trees require a winter chill between 4 degrees and 13 degrees. If the winter chill is not there, olives do not flower.
This range can vary from specific cultivar/breed.
I would like to know if there are any cultivar which is successful for indian temperatures.

Thanks.

[shrinivas]

Dear Jacob,

The variety of Olive tree is " CYPRUS GCY 1 & GCY 2 ". Infact this variety can survive in deserts. Recently huge amount of Olive tree plantations cultivated in Rajastan desert this year. Regarding yielding - No proof sofar,because this is new to our country.

Shrinivas

Originally Posted by sjacob

Dear Shrinivas,

Which variety of olives are these? I thought olives need wintering climate of atleast between 14 to 22 deg C. Will these trees yield in Tamil Nadu?

[sprecher]

A word of caution, although not from an expert in this field.
To our best knowledge, so far nowhere in India olive trees
did have fruits, even in areas where climatic conditions
would be favourable.

Why, well we have no idea.

A colleague who researched India to set up a very large olive project,
decided to stay in the Mediteranean region.
To invest four years, before realizing it failed is too much a risk.

Yehuda Sprecher, architect
dairy consultant, Israel

[Vinod Kumar]

in that commercial cultivation of olives is too risky in India. Better to intercrop with vineyards using early fruiting Super High Density method of olive cultivation.

I offer three suggestions for olive cultivation in India.

1) they should be grown for Table olives to be used as pizza toppings, pickles, Uttappams etc with Indian food and not that much for Olive oil. My feeling is that Olive oil may be used for medicinal and skin care purposes and not for cooking oil in India. But olives as food items (pizza toppings) would be a much more wider market.

2) we should use Super High density olive cultivation method.

Super High-density system

Traditional olives are planted 120 trees per acre and hand harvested. In the high-density system developed in Spain 15 years ago, 600 to 900 trees are planted per acre; trellised like a vineyard; pruned to remain short in stature and harvested with a conventional mechanical grape harvester. SHD system gives fruits earlier but after the tenth year aggressive management is needed to maintain the yield equivalent to those from conventional olive orchards.

3) olive cultivation should go hand in hand with grape cultivation as is seen the world over.

[joaojcorreia]

Originally Posted by Vinod Kumar

2) we should use Super High density olive cultivation method.

Super High-density system

Traditional olives are planted 120 trees per acre and hand harvested. In the high-density system developed in Spain 15 years ago, 600 to 900 trees are planted per acre; trellised like a vineyard; pruned to remain short in stature and harvested with a conventional mechanical grape harvester. SHD system gives fruits earlier but after the tenth year aggressive management is needed to maintain the yield equivalent to those from conventional olive orchards.

3) olive cultivation should go hand in hand with grape cultivation as is seen the world over.

Just a few considerations about the SHD system:

*Its a thing for professionals, the olive tree bares fruit on branches that are two years old, so it is very easy trough untrained pruning to compromise the next year production;

*Also you can only use three cultivars in SHD, they are "Arbequiña" "Arbossana" and "Koroneyki", any other cultivar will probably be to vigorous to adapt to this system;

*I can't inter-crop with vineyards, the same farm should have booth, so that one can have a greater usage of the harvesting machine, but you shouldn't inter-crop, i.e. have one row of vineyard one row o olives. The olive trees will end up shading the vines, and one wouldn't have proper grape maturation.

Best regards,

João Granja Correia

Agronomer
M.Sc. in Olive Growing and Olive oil Technology

[Vinod Kumar]

Thank you João Granja Correia for monitoring the discussion on olives in India and offering your expert opinion. Are you located in Spain please? (later I found that you are from Portugal).

Of the three varieties suitable for SHD, which are for oil and which for table olives?

I suggested intercropping SHD olives with vines because I had seen pictures of normal olive trees intercropped with vines. Please look at the photographs at 100_6665 on Flickr - Photo Sharing! (Mendoza, Argentina) and Olive Grove, Vanato on Flickr - Photo Sharing! (Zakynthos, Greece ). My conjecture was that if the olive trees and vines can grow side by side, SHD olives and vines can happily grow together row by row. If the rows are laid out east to west then the olives may not shade over the vines. I also vaguely remember that the vine rows are preferred to be in east-west direction.

I feel that people serious about olive cultivation in India should seek consultancy from experts like Correia before jumping into a long term activity like olive cultivation.

[joaojcorreia]

Thank you Vinok Kumar,

All the cultivar used in SHD are used only for oil. And all of them have very small fruits, so there is no chance of ever being used for table olives. Also you wouldn't be able to use SHD for the production of table olives, because SHD relies on heavy mechanical harvesting that would damage the olives making them unsuitable for the production of table olives.

Answering your other question, yes olives and grapevine grow well together. In fact in some parts of the Mediterranean you would see in the same row olives and vines growing. Now a days this isn't used, because of the different treatments and fertilizing both crops require that would make very ineffective treating grapevines for one thing and the week after going in to the same patch of land to treat the olive trees for another, spending twice as much petrol. It is much more cost effective to keep them separated from each other.
Also the shading from the olive trees, delays the maturation of the grapes and thus reduces dramatically the quality of the wine. This is another reason why no one is using this system anymore, now a days you either produce quality wine or you will go out of business.

For optimal illumination, grapevines as SHD olive orchards should be planted in a N - S direction, with a distance between the rows that will minimize shading and allow for mechanization of the crop.

cheers,

João Granja Correia