Disease ravages timeless olive groves of southern Italy

Gallipoli, Italy

ITALIAN olive grower Federico Manni is at the end of his tether.

"You see this one," he says, waving in the direction of a majestic but diseased olive tree on his property near Gallipoli on the Salento peninsula on Italy's heel.

"It is over one thousand years old. Fires and wars failed to kill it, but that's what xylella is doing." Mr Manni's wedding pictures were taken underneath this particular tree. And he is filled with dread at the prospect of its imminent demise at the hands of a bacterial infection thought to be behind an outbreak of desiccation ravaging the olive groves of this fertile corner of southern Italy.

"I am very pessimistic," the young spokesman for producers organisation "La Voce dell'Ulivo" (The Olive's Voice), tells AFP. "I feel like we have no weapons with which to fight back." The reason for Mr Manni's despair is xylella fastidiosa, a deadly bacterial pathogen that has no known cure and, for reasons experts have so far been unable to explain…