Olive trees, a traditional crop in much of the Middle East, have suffered major production declines in recent years due to climatic changes. Concurrently, in many of the traditionally managed olive orchards harmful burnings of trimmings are still carried out.
Here we report the initial results from a study aimed at examining how to transform trimmings from waste to resource by using shredded trimmings as mulch material to increase orchard resilience to climate change.
The study was conducted in a traditionally managed olive orchard in central Israel (~600 mm annual precipitation). The effects of a 12 m2 area of olive mulch spread around tree trunks at 15 cm and 5 cm height treatments were compared to uncovered control trees.
In contrast to our expectations, mulch cover did not affect soil moisture content at 10 cm depth during the rainfall period and the following dry season. In agreement with this, no differences were observed in tree growth. This was indicated by continuous dendrometer measurements alongside temporal measurements of leaf water potential and leaf water conductance. Olive yield was not yet measured after this winter period. Slight differences were observed in soil temperature dynamics, with temperature changes in the soil 10 cm depth occurring at a lesser extent in the heavily mulched soil as compared to the control.
While the mulch did not improve tree performance during this first year of the study, the unhindered growth of the trees still carries promise for this practice. Effects on plant nutrition will be discussed.
