Botany

FORK & CORK - One taste associated with wilderness is saffron for me. Though saffron is most usually cultivated, for me it reflects a wildly woody flavor that evokes dreams of an adventurous hunt for the elusive spice

Turkey needs both a domestic and international strategy to market its rapidly growing olive oil output, according to Cahit Çetin, head of Tariş, one of the two leading olive and olive oil unions

BELGRADE - The Jevremovac Botanical Garden was officially opened on Friday after two years of reconstruction bankrolled with EU and national funds - the unique natural asset situated in downtown Belgrade, dubbed "the lungs of the city," will now be open to visitors.

Villagers in the Aegean town of Soma are keeping guard at their olive groves following a code that has opened such fields to the construction of power plants.

Olive groves at the disaster-struck town in western Turkey were surrounded by a wire fence to make way for the construction of a third thermic plant

At a loss about what to do with thousands of tons of produce that remains undelivered due to a Russian food embargo, Greek peach and nectarine producers must wait until Friday when European Commission officials are expected to draft a plan for compensating farmers producing those fruits in Greece and other EU countries hit by the ban.

The first ever attempt to map Greece’s seagrass meadows has been given the go-ahead after Agricultural Development Minister Giorgos Karasmanis signed a decision to launch an invitation for bids for the 850,000-euro project.

The charting of the Posidonia oceanica, which is commonly known as Neptune grass or Mediterranean tapeweed, is to be carried out by the end of 2015.

“In the event that olive growing activities and other investment fields overlap, other investments and natural resources should be evaluated in terms of whether or not the olive grove is less beneficial than other possible activities.”

This is the Energy Ministry’s justification for the bill it has just prepared, which has been dubbed a “death sentence for olive groves.” 

Turkey’s Council of State has ordered a stay of execution for the government’s decision to “urgently expropriate” an olive grove in western Turkey in order to build a wind farm power plant, marking a legal victory for the plot’s 80-year-old owner, “Auntie” Remziye Saatli.

According to Spanish José Maria Blazquez, writer of World Olive Encyclopedia, olive growing started in Anatolia about 6,000 years ago. The world’s oldest-known olive oil production was discovered near the Aegean town of Urla, in the ancient city Clazomenae.