PLANTATION DENSITY EXPERIMENTS OF NON-IRRIGATED OLIVE GROVES IN ANDALUSIA

The results of the first 11 harvests from two plantation layout experiments of non-irrigated olive groves carried out in the province of Córdoba are presented. The densities ranged from 100 to 400 trees/ha. It does not seem of interest to plant more than 300 trees/ha at short and medium terms as with 400 trees no significant increases in harvest were observed, although a decrease in average yield was not observed either. Up to now, no differences between the square and rectangular layout have been observed. It is preferable to plant 312 olive trees per ha with a single trunk than 100 or 156 olive trees per ha with three or two trunks, respectively.