🐛 Plant Protection

Olive Pests and Diseases

Olive pests and olive tree diseases: fruit fly, moth, black scale, peacock spot, olive knot. Identification, thresholds and integrated management.

See the articles Home

The biggest crop losses in olives come not from disease but from a pest seen too late. The articles in this section follow the integrated pest management instruction of Türkiye's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

Article The olive pest calendar and intervention thresholds Month by month: which pest is at which stage, and when to count. Fly infestation thresholds, black scale shoot counts, and the three regional programmes for peacock spot.

Article Herbicide-free weed management in olive groves: from cover crops to autonomous robots Managing weeds rather than eliminating them: cover crops, mulch, grazing, flame weeding and AI-assisted precision farming — five tools and a practical order for combining them.

Article Weeds in the olive grove: bare soil is not the goal Johnson grass, Bermuda grass and fat hen. With perennials, ill-timed tillage spreads them while mowing stops the seed. Clean under the canopy, covered between rows.

Article Olive root rots: Armillaria and Rosellinia Mistaking the yellowing for drought is the common error. Two soil-borne fungi kill the tree in its prime; there is no chemical cure — the work is water management and isolation.

Article Olive anthracnose: the disease of the mummified fruit left on the branch Up to 50% crop loss in bad years. The source is last year's mummified fruit still on the branch, and the spray goes on before the autumn rains, not after.

Article Other olive pests: jasmine moth, psyllid and olive scale Three olive pests overshadowed by the fruit fly: the jasmine moth on tender shoots, the cottony psyllid, and olive scale.

Article Olive black scale and sooty mould: the H on its back The olive pest behind sooty mould: a scale with an H on its back. Losses of 60-70%; if parasitism tops 50%, do not spray.

Article Olive knot: galls, warts and a bacterium that enters through wounds The bacterial canker among olive tree diseases that enters through wounds: galls and warts. Pole harvest and pruning errors spread it.

Article Verticillium wilt: the disease that kills the tree and has no cure The olive tree disease that kills: it survives over 10 years in the soil, blocks the vessels, and has no effective chemical control.

Article The olive moth: three generations, three kinds of damage The olive pest with three generations: it winters in the leaf, eats the flowers, enters the fruit. One larva can take 30-40 buds.

Article Olive peacock spot: symptoms and a region-by-region spray calendar The commonest of olive tree diseases: concentric rings on the leaf, shedding, a shrubby tree. Yield falls 20-25%; spray timing varies by region.

Article The olive fruit fly: sting thresholds, traps and a control calendar The olive pest that costs most: losses of 15-30% if left alone. Sting threshold 1% for table varieties, 3-4% for oil.