A Preliminary Study on Fruiting and Propagation of Olive Cultivars(Olea europea) in Yemen

Abstract

Olive trees cultivation started in the early 1980s in Yemen on a limited scale to study the possibility of growing olive cultivars. However, there has not been any intensive study to follow the growth and fruiting of planted olive trees except some field visits that were not enough to come out with strong
recommendations that benefit the growers and researchers. Therefore, this study was conducted to follow fruiting of 72 olive trees belong to unknown cultivars. After 6 years from planting, only three trees produced fruits during the seventh year. Fruit samples were taken randomly from the trees for fruit measurements. The yield of the fruiting trees was 44.5-92.0kg, fruit weight was 3.00-3.65gm, percent of
fruit flash was 81.00-89.65% and percent of oil in the fruit flash was 23-26%. The two trees with the highest yields were propagated by semi-hard wood cuttings in sand media with spraying the cuttings with water once or twice a day. The percent of rooted cuttings was 38.1-47.4%. These results indicate that the production of the studied olive trees fall in the upper level of the olive tree production in the world and
they can be propagated easily by cuttings. Therefore, these olive trees can be grown successfully in the
Sana’a area.