Chapter 4 - Olive propagation and nursery

Plant propagation consists of the application of specific biological principles and particular techniques for the multiplication of plants. The plants obtained in the process should also be identical, or as similar as possible, to the plants from which they are derived. Olive trees are today mainly reproduced by cutting propagation and micro propagation (i.e. in vitro propagation), but grafting propagation is still largely utilized, especially in some Mediterranean coun tries, such as Italy and Greece. In Italy, for instance, grafting propagation still repre sents about 65% of the 5 million trees pro duced by the olive nurseries.