An Overview of Olive Cultivation in Turkey: Botanical Features, Eco-Physiology and Phytochemical Aspects

Abstract

Global climate change, especially global warming, is affecting olive production efficiency as well as its product quality. The size and water content of fruit varies depending on the olive fruit yield along with the region, climate, and geographical position as well as agricultural applications. Anthropogenic activities also affect its ecology to a great extent. The plant prefers areas with mild winters and short rainy seasons but is facing long and dry summers, sunny habitats, well drained dry, poor, loamy, clayey-loamy, slightly calcareous, pebbly and nutrient-rich soils, with a pH around 6–8. It is resistant to drought but suffers much from harsh winters and air pollutants, which affect its production. Although the olive plant tolerates temperatures between −7 °C to 40 °C, the optimum temperature demanded for growth, development, and fruit yield is 15–25 °C. The annual precipitation demand lies between 700–850 mm. An important part of the composition of its fruit consists of water and oil or the “liquid gold”. Main ingredients are additionally fat-soluble vitamins, minerals, organic sugars, and phenolics. Phenolic substances are responsible for many beneficial health effects as well as the taste and aroma of olive fruit. Oleuropein stands out due to its inhibition of oxidation of low density lipoproteins and its hypoglycemic and cholesterolemic effects. It is also a component that protects the olive tree against various parasites and diseases, one of the reasons why olive is recorded as the “immortal tree”. Olive trees are cultivated in different regions of Turkey. A series of changes occur in morphological, physiological, and biochemical features to overcome different types of stress. In this review, information about the botanical aspects, eco-physiology, and pharmaceutical features of the oil, fruit, and leaves has been evaluated.

Cold Stress, Freezing Adaptation, Varietal Susceptibility of Olea europaea L.: A Review

“…For the environmental conditions, olive is considered one of the most suitable and best adapted species to the Mediterranean-type climate, characterized by mild and humid winters, with minimum temperatures of about −4 °C, and hot and dry summers, with maximum temperatures of about 50 °C; and most of the rainfalls concentrated in the cold season. [ 16 , 18 , 19 , 20 ]. Under the climate conditions of Mediterranean region, the vegetative-reproductive cycle is biennial in which production and induction of flower buds coexist at the same time, on the growing shoot, for fruiting the following year [ 13 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ] ( Figure 1 ).…”

Preparation and Evaluation of Virgin Olive Oil Oleogels Including Thyme and Cumin Spices with Sunflower Wax

“…Of these, 30 are the most common and provide around 2 million tons of olives, 190,000 tons of olive oil, and 410,000 tons of table olives. Turkey exports around 55,000 tons of olive oil and 70,000 tons of table olives yearly, according to published 2016 statistics [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ].…”

Seasonal variation of mercury concentration of ancient olive groves of Lebanon

“…When minimum values of pCO2atm are reached at the end of the dry summer (Figure 3b), concomitant to minimum atmospheric Hg (Figure 3a), end of the drought and increase of precipitation (Figure 3c, d), BC and KW olive trees show a rerise of the Hg uptake. The photosynthetic activity and the stomatal conductance related to the climatic parameters (temperature, precipitation, humidity, pCO2) as shown by Ozturk et al (2021) and the atmospheric Hg explain our foliage Hg seasonal cycle. At a regional scale, our sites show different time lags between BC and KW that we cannot explain fully except their altitudinal differences which can suggest that BC grove benefits of less drought in summer.…”