Effect of organic amendments and other soil conditioners on olive tree productivity

FEADER (The European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development) through the project “Novas práticas em olivais de sequeiro: estratégias de mitigação e adaptação às alterações climáticas”. PDR2020, Grupos Operacionais, Parceria 343, Iniciativa 278.
The use of organic matter and other soil conditioners can increase the resilience of the agrosystems to the degradation of plant growth conditions due to global warming. The problem is particularly important in rainfed orchards, where the extensive summer period tends to severely hamper tree growth and development and crop productivity. In February 2017 a field trial was installed in Mirandela (NE Portugal) in a traditional olive grove rainfed managed in which some organic and mineral soil conditioners were used, namely zeolites, biochar, cow manure and urban solid waste. There were also included a treatment of mineral fertilization and a non-fertilized control. After two successive harvests, olive yields varied between 1700 and 2200 kg ha-1 year-1 without significant differences between treatments. Between years there was observed a slight decrease from the harvests of 2017 to that of 2018. The lack of response to fertilizer treatments in the short-term may be due to the high volume of soil that a tree exploits and that gives it buffer capacity and to other environmental constraints increasing experimental variability, such as drought stress that severely restricts the physiological processes of the trees.

VIVO