The plan to save Italy's dying olive trees with dogs

August 30, 2023 7:33 AM

On a sunny winter morning, dog trainer Mario Fortebraccio slowly bends toward a line of potted olive trees and indicates it with his hand. Waiting for that signal, Paco, a three-year-old white Labrador, rushes through the row of plants with his head tilted, sniffing each pot at the root, the rhythm of his inhaling echoing through the greenhouse. The dog is carefully scouting for something humans can't sense: Xylella fastidiosa, a type of bacterium that has been ravaging southern Italy's olive fields for the past decade. Paco and a few other four-legged colleagues make up the highly trained Xylella Detection Dogs team.
posted by DirtyOldTown (6 comments total)

These are GOOD DOGS.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:45 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

They are all GOOD DOGS!

Dogs are just amazing.
posted by Windopaene at 8:55 AM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fun fact: there's currently a pilot study on the East Coast recruiting citizen dogs to learn how to find and alert to spotted lantern fly eggs. (They're asking for people who do recreational nosework at a NW3 level at the moment.)

If that program pans out, we might start seeing volunteers manning canine biosecurity stations in the same way that volunteer canine units often work with SAR teams today. Most dogs seem able to do the detection part of the work with a little training to help dogs and handlers fine-tune their communication with each other and show the dog what scents to work for. What a cool way to hang out with your dog!
posted by sciatrix at 11:00 AM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Xylella is a serious problem. It's been killing off many of the oldest olive trees in Puglia for years.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:16 PM on August 30, 2023

I initially misread the headline as "The plan to replace Italy's dying olive trees with dogs" and was puzzled for a bit.
posted by moonmilk at 8:00 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Years ago, we got a grant to allow dogs to be trained for a different plant disease in our Bio-Safety Level three containment facility. It was wonderful for us to have dogs around and to see the culture of dog training. Dog trainers are wonderful people. We began to wish that someone followed us around and loudly exclaimed in a high-pitched voice "GOOD GIRL! WHAT A GOOD GIRL!" when we did something right. We first hosted a beagle who was adorable but tired easily and got distracted by liking all of us. In order for the tests he took to be double-blind tests (so his trainer didn't inadvertently give the dog unconscious cues on which box contained the infected plant tissue), I was the one to prepare the inoculum and arrange the boxes. I started out skeptical but became very impressed by the dog's accuracy.

The best working dogs were Belgian Malinois that had been bred in some nightmare kennel in a former Soviet Republic. They were so nervous they couldn't gain weight. They ignored us and had an unhealthy fixation on work. In all honesty, it caused some of us to question our own work ethic; were we slaves to our salaries the same way these dogs were slaves to their rubber chew toy? At any rate, we were later happy to see YouTube videos of the same dogs out in orchards finding diseased trees so early that they wouldn't even test positive on a molecular assay.

The best part was that, this being in a BSL-3 facility, the dogs were required to shower out, and the cutest thing in the world is a sad soapy beagle.
posted by acrasis at 9:27 AM on September 2, 2023 [4 favorites]