On June 24, the two-day Meeting on Promotion of Olive oil in OIC member states was completed. At the final session of the meeting, the participants discussed issues of standardization, certification and geographical identification of olive oil, where the General Directorate of Agricultural production of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries of Tunisia and International Olive Council shared their experience in this area.
In the afternoon, participants visited premises of the National Olive Office, the Mabrouka nursery and Al Jazira Tunisian olive oil manufacturing and trade company.
During the visit, the National Olive Office shared about the activities of the organization, including training courses on improving olive oil quality, production of table olives, harmonization of quality standards, and certification of organic olive oil.
At the Mabrouka nursery and Al Jazira participants exposed to the olive trees plants, vitroplants laboratories, fruits seedlinks, and olive oil processing technologies.
During the trips Opportunities for further development of olive oil and expansion of the trade markets were explored.
Additionally IOFS Gene Bank Training is on-going for the African Member Countries. Within the training plant genetic resources professionals from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Niger, Senegal and Togo continue experiencing the best practices of the PGR conservation and management of genebank focusing on specific issues such as establishment of conservation strategy and international standards. The program of the training also includes methods of conservation of GR, on farm-conservation and sustainable use of agro-biodiversity, best practices for GR acquisition/collection, regeneration/multiplication of genetic resources, DNA bank and genetic information, characterization activities in the laboratory, seed handling, GR documentation, introduction to the DataBase Management System and etc. In addition, the experts from FAO and the Global Corp Diversity Trust are invited to share their experience on the Global Information System. In addition, the participants have visited the National Botanical Garden in which they found plants from different countries adapted in Tunisia, as well as the field gene bank in 27 hectares where the Tunisian germplasm collection are assembled.
