EVALUATION OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMPONENTS OF THE TAGGIASCA “TERROIR” OLIVE (IMPERIA, ITALY)

Abstract

The acknowledgement of the territory vocation is founded on the research of its peculiarities which determine the uniqueness of that production area. In this paper, results concerning the first contributions to characterize terroir environment components of Taggiasca olive in Imperia province are presented and discussed. GIS was used to improve the process of landscape characterization. Several profiles from distinct production olive groves were selected for full pedological description and analysis. The analysis showed that the olive groves were mainly located in areas characterized by the following aspects: average annual rainfall between 800 and 1200 mm/y, average annual temperature between 11° and 17° C, altitude between 0 and 400 m a.s.l., acclivity between 5° and 15° and exposure on west slope. Moreover, the research highlighted a number of distinctive features of soils which were characterized by properties rather homogeneous, e.g. moderate depth, good drainage, sub-alkaline reaction, good organic carbon, phosphorus and total nitrogen contents. Finally, we suggested an update of the official PDO EVO production protocols regarding the environment of Taggiasca olive.