The very mention of olives brings to the mind the fact that it is a tree of Mediterranean origin grown widely in countries like Spain and Italy. But the olive trees have now come to bloom in Rajasthan’s Thar desert, as per a news report of September 2019.
It all began with the visit of the former chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, to Israel in 2006. The olive trees in the Negev desert impressed her much. So, the trees were imported and planted over 180 hectares of government land using Israeli technology. Later, in 2014, an oil refinery was set up in Bikaner to extract olive oil and an extractor machine for the purpose was imported from Italy.
Some 1,300 tonnes of fruits were collected from the first trees grown in 2014 and 2015. But the trees could not adapt to the conditions as only a few could yield fruits the following year. As such, it was important that fruitless olive trees should be used for things other than extracting oil in order to sustain cultivation of olive trees.
By working in this direction, India became an unusual innovation hub for olives when different experiments with the olive were conducted, including production of olive tea, meticulously carved out statuettes from the olive wood, and olive groves as an agrotourism attraction. This resulted in over 700 hectares of land being used for cultivation of olive trees by 150 farmers, and this could just be the beginning! Three factories have been established to prepare olive tea.
Rajasthan Olive Corporation Ltd. (ROCL) is experimenting to bring yet another olive product—olive wine—in the market. In this regard, research is being conducted at Vidhya Sagar University, West Bengal; the Tripura University; and Jiwaji University, Indore. In case, the experiment with olive wine does not turn out as expected, there is always the hospitality industry to promote this Mediterranean delight.
Olive tree landscaping is the latest among the resourceful. An olive tree imported from Spain costs between ` 4 lakh and ` 40 lakh. Demand for them mostly comes from farmhouses, hotels, residential societies, and high-end bungalows. So, there is no dearth of uses of olive trees.
ROCL has also distributed 4.5 lakh saplings of olive to Punjab, Himachal, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, and the north-east states as India now plans to produce olives of its own. In 2017–18, about 10,914.86 metric tonnes of olive oil was imported by India.