Almond Growing in the South of Italy

Sicily and Apulia remain the two areas with the greatest crop diffusion accounting for more than 60,000 ha, underlining a strong dynamism of the sector that tries to keep quality standards for international interest.
 
The only varietal types that are widespread today in Italy are the Mediterranean semi-hard-shell varieties with a fair spread, and even today, traditional and local hard-shell varieties. The Apulian self-fertile Tuono and Genco are the most widely diffused, often interspersed with some local germplasm cultivars destined to some unique industrial processing; for this purpose, Fascionello, Pizzuta d'Avola, Romana, Vinci a tutti, are the main local cultivars of Sicilian germplasm that still find space in the new orchards.
 
Almost unknown, the soft-shell cultivars and in few orchards, some of Spanish origin have been introduced, Vairo and Guara in particular. They have been introduced through the use of plants already grafted from nurseries and connected to Spanish commercial structures. These cultivars find excellent adaptability to the organic management which is increasing a lot in southern Italy.
 
Regarding planting systems, the presence of a model that is now obsolete and difficult to compete with is still evident, but it is struggling to be completely replaced by a tangible sign of innovation towards a completely different model. Ultimately, there is a resumption of interest in the Italian almond sector, especially in Sicily, where for over ten years there has been a constant growth of commercial interest and there are many experiences of new investments even from large companies. These new orchards are experiencing that the almond grove benefits a lot from a specialized cultivation model, and with relevant productive and qualitative answers of great interest for the modern fruit growing. The most widespread innovative almond orchards range from 400 to 600 trees/ha, grafted on clonal or seed rootstocks, managed with drip irrigation or sub-irrigation, trained in order to allow the use of machines or mechanical aids for harvesting.
 
The coexistence between two different models of almond cultivation is therefore still evident today; in areas without irrigation resources, there is still a strong tradition that requires the use of traditional management techniques, with lower planting densities and manual harvesting. The varietal platform is the same while the use of inputs is considerably different. There is very low interest in Sicily for high density orchards based on the Spanish model, while in Apulia a few hundred ha have been planted following this model.
 
A recent study[1], carried out in Sicily has analyzed different almond orchards in order to highlight both environmental and economic sustainability during the planting life. The study, with some results reported in table 1 and 2, underlined that, besides a greater environmental impact, the innovative plant model allows higher economic profitability than the traditional one, despite higher planting and operating costs. The environmental impact, however, remains substantially lower than that reported in the bibliography for alternative species, such as table grapes and citrus fruits, which have much higher water needs and crop management costs are not comparable.

Table 1 and 2.

Data on almond orchard profitability and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) 

Table 1 and 2 – Data on almond orchard profitability and LCA. Source: Sottile, F., Massaglia, S., & Peano, C. (2020). Ecological and Economic Indicators for the Evaluation of Almond (Prunus dulcis L.) Orchard Renewal in Sicily. Agriculture, 10(7), 301.

One of the effects of this new interest in the almond tree sector is the resumption of research activities and prospects for aggregation. In the center of Sicily, the first Italian Almond Producers' Organization (La Mandorla soc. coop.) has been developed, involving hundreds of mostly organic companies, with over 1500 ha of orchards processed and transformed, thanks to the presence of structures for the processing of the product starting from Bongiovanni Almonds Ltd.
 
The University of Palermo supports scientific research also through the establishment of the Interdepartmental Research Center for the ‘Bio-Based Re-use of waste from agri-food matrices’ that brings together researchers from the production phase to processing. Recently the Sicilian Dried Fruit District was established, an aggregation tool that brings together over 100 Sicilian enterprises of almond, hazelnut, pistachio and carob with the aim of sharing the needs and requirements of innovation developed through industrial research projects and experimental development.
 
All of this development takes concrete form in an activity that considers the essential choices towards sustainable agricultural models found in the Agenda 2030 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. They also take into consideration the indications of the Farm to Fork Strategy of the European Commission. The production areas of Southern Italy allow for high quality levels of production without aflatoxins and it provides almonds that are suitable for food processing, cosmetics and the pharmaceutical industry. The time of obsolete and traditional almond farming is over and today we are working towards an organic, competitive and qualitatively excellent almond farming.