Once used mainly to domesticate wild trees, grafting is re-emerging as a key tool for fighting disease, adapting to climate change and preserving rare olive varieties.
By Ylenia Granitto·June 18, 2026
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Grafting is an ancestral horticultural technique that enables plant propagation, domestication of wild varieties and replacement of cultivars. It involves inserting a plant’s scion onto the trunk, branch or root of another related plant, known as the rootstock, so that the two unite and grow as a single plant.
Olive tree grafting has long been used to domesticate wild plants and establish new varieties. Shared primarily through oral tradition and largely unchanged over time, the practice is now re-emerging as a tool to tackle phytosanitary problems, improve agronomic traits and production quality, and safeguard biodiversity threatened by genetic erosion.
“Grafting is one of the foundational techniques that shaped the evolution of agriculture over the millennia. In fruit growing in particular, it has been widely used to propagate woody species like the olive tree,” said Felice Suma, a Puglia-based agronomist specializing in organic farming.
“In the past, farmers grafted oleasters that have become today’s monumental olive trees,” he said. “They also observed in the field which varieties were best suited to their needs, considering factors such as cold, drought and disease resistance, as well as fruit traits such as ripening time, size and flavor, and grafted those trees with the most suitable varieties, many of which have persisted to the present. Today this practice is as relevant as ever, as it helps improve production, introduce varieties tolerant or resistant to disease, and save local varieties that would otherwise be lost.”
Olive tree grafting: preparation and key methods
The following is a broad outline of the preparatory steps and grafts most commonly applied, though the practice has countless variations shaped by different agronomic approaches and regional traditions.
The best time for grafting is during the first warm days of the season, when the tree is in active sap flow and can immediately nourish the newly introduced buds.
Read the article in oliveoiltimes.com