Arnon Dag

Arnon Dag
Agricultural Research Organization ARO | aro · Institute of Plant Sciences

Professor

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216
Publications
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Publications

Publications (216)
Article
אוכלוסיות של זית הבר, האב הקדמון של עצי הזית המתורבתים, פזורות בכל רחבי אגן הים התיכון. עם זאת, לאחר אלפי שנים של קיום בסמיכות לזני תרבות, זהותן הטקסונומית כזן הבר אינה ברורה. בדרום הלבנט, האתר המרכזי הסביר ביותר לתִרבות זני הזית המודרניים, רבים מהעצים הגדלים טבעית נחשבים פליטי תרבות שהופצו מעצים נטועים. זיהוי אוכלוסיות של זן הבר המקורי של זית אירו...
Article
Full-text available
Virgin olive oil (VOO) quality is defined by both chemical and sensory parameters. While the chemical parameters are objective and measured using instrument-based methods, sensory quality evaluation is based upon human panels, which can be subjective, have less repeatability, suffer from fatigue, and require long and costly training. Tasting biases...
Article
Full-text available
Background Populations of Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. sylvestris, the ancestor of cultivated olives, are scattered across the Mediterranean Basin. However, after millennia of possible hybridization with cultivated varieties, the genetic identity of many of these populations remain questionable. In the southern Levant, the plausible primary d...
Article
Among the commercial cannabis varieties, some are high yielders but characterized by a relatively poor root system. Roots absorb water and minerals from the soil, enabling vegetative development that directly affects yield, as vigorous plants have more resources to support reproduction. Moreover, healthy foliage is a primary key to high assimilatio...
Presentation
Full-text available
The olive tree (Olea europaea) is the most important fruit tree of the Mediterranean Basin, possessing both economic and cultural significance. The earliest evidences of olive fruits usage (table olives and oil extraction) that had been found in the southern Levant (modern Israel) indicate on the focal role of this region in olive domestication and...
Presentation
Full-text available
It is known that the ancestor of cultivated olives (Olea europaea) is its wild relative- O. europaea subsp. europaea var. sylvestris, yet the original gene pool of var. sylvestris remains unknown and whether genuine populations of the wild ancestor still exist is the subject of debate among botanists. In this research we focused on the most hypothe...
Article
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Jojoba wax is gaining popularity among cosmetics consumers for its skin wound healing and rejuvenation bioactivities, attributed to collagen and hyaluronic acid synthesis. However, information regarding wax phytochemical composition and quality parameters, as well as effect of cultivation practices, and fertilization in particular, on wax quality i...
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Sodic soil formation, following irrigation with saline-sodic water has become a major concern due to its negative impact on soil structure, crop growth and yield. However, specifically in orchards, little knowledge exists regarding the reclamation of sodic soils. Our objective was to examine the effects of different amendments on soil reclamation a...
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Traditional olive (Olea europaea) orchards have been grown for thousands of years and still occupy most of the world’s cultivated olive areas. To compete with olive oil produced in the higher-yielding intensive orchards, the oil from traditional orchards must be of high quality. We evaluated oil quality—potential and actual (under commercial condit...
Article
Full-text available
Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis) is cultivated for its seeds, which contain a high-value liquid wax. There is little known regarding irrigation requirements of intensively cultivated jojoba. The project’s objectives were to evaluate the effects of irrigation regime on water status, growth, yield, and water productivity (WP, wax yield per unit of water...
Article
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Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis L.) wax was previously reported to increase cutaneous wound healing, ameliorate acne and psoriasis manifestations, and reduce oxidative stress and inflammation. However, its potential cosmetic properties have not been fully investigated. Thus, the current study aimed to evaluate the anti-inflammatory activities of jojob...
Article
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Leaks and clogs in drip-irrigated orchards lead to variable yields, reduced efficiency and profitability. Frequent monitoring of irrigation systems by farmers is important but costly, labor-intensive, and not easily implementable on a regular basis. Moreover, in subsur-face drip-irrigation systems, it is difficult to visually detect malfunctions. T...
Preprint
Full-text available
Traditional olive orchards have been grown for thousands of years and still occupy most of the world’s olive cultivation area. To compete with olive oil produced in the higher-yielding intensive orchards, the oil from traditional orchards must be of high quality. We evaluated oil quali-ty—potential and actual (under commercial conditions)—and ident...
Article
Full-text available
Although jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis) has been cultivated for years, information on its N requirements is limited. A 6-year study of mature jojoba plants grown under field conditions with an intensive management regime evaluated the effect of N application rate on plant nutrient status, growth, and productivity, and nitrate accumulation in the soi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Although jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis) has been cultivated for years, information on its N re-quirements is limited. A 6-year study of mature jojoba plants grown under field conditions with an intensive management regime evaluated the effect of N-application rate on plant nutrient status, growth and productivity, and nitrate accumulation in the soi...
Presentation
Full-text available
The domestication process of olives (Olea europaea) is still a subject for debate among scholars. One of the main hypothesis is that its domestication started in the southern Levant. With that assumption in mind and with some of the earliest evidences of olive fruits usage (table olives and olive oil) that have been found in this region, the histor...
Article
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Oil in fruits and seeds is an important source of calories and essential fatty acids for humans. This specifically holds true for olive oil, which is appreciated for its superior nutritional value. Most olive orchards are cultivated to produce oil, which are the outcome of fruit yield and oil content. Little information is available on the effect o...
Article
Full-text available
The olive tree (Olea europaea L. subsp. europaea var. europaea) is one of the most important crops across the Mediterranean, particularly the southern Levant. Its regional economic importance dates at least to the Early Bronze Age (~3600 BCE) and its cultivation contributed significantly to the culture and heritage of ancient civilizations in the r...
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Olive trees are known for their capability to endure and recover from low stem water potentials (Ψstem <-6 MPa) and even maintain substantial gas exchange under such conditions. In the current experiment, we tested the physiological responses of mature olive trees in-situ while enduring such Ψstem under field conditions for seven months of rainless...
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Recent economic, environmental, and regulative concerns force farmers to precise their fertilization practices. Yet, a critical knowledge gap concerning the temporal variability in perennials’ nutritional requirements renders most fertilization applications inefficient. While mass balance studies could illustrate the dynamics of crops’ mineral upta...
Article
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Olive (Olea europaea L.) trees can reach a very old age and still bear fruit. Although traditional groves are planted at low density and are rainfed, many newer groves are planted at higher densities and irrigated. As expected, initial yields per area are larger in high density plantations, yet some farmers claim they experience a reduction in prod...
Article
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With climate change, spring heatwaves have become frequent in the Mediterranean region. High temperatures combined with wind and low humidity are problematic for subtropical crops adapted to high humidity and mild climate. Avocado is a valuable crop—nutritionally and economically—and many new orchards are planted in Mediterranean areas. Spring heat...
Article
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BACKGROUND Intensive olive (Olea europaea L.) orchards are fertilized, mostly with the macronutrients nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). The effects of different application levels of these nutrients on olive oil composition and quality were studied over 6 years in a commercial intensively cultivated ‘Barnea’ olive orchard in Israel....
Book
Proceeding of the IX International Symposium on Mineral Nutrition of Fruit Crops
Article
Olive (Olea europaea) trees in the arid Negev Desert of southern Israel are important relicts on the ancient agricultural landscape. Among them are a cluster of several trees located in Wadi Zetan, at the heart of the Shivta horticulture terroir, with its abundant agricultural runoff remains. Two isolated olive bearing trees stand in a sheltered be...
Article
Avocado is an edible crop with increasing economic significance. ‘Hass’ is the primary avocado cultivar, gaining high popularity among consumers and dominating the world industry. ‘Hass’ cultivation areas expand each year, but growers consistently report issues of irregular bearing and low yields. Leaf mineral analyses revealed that leaf boron (B)...
Article
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The first exploited and domesticated olive forms are still unknown. The exceptionally wellpreserved stones from the submerged Hishuley Carmel site (Israel), dating from the middle of the 7th millennium BP, offer us the opportunity to study the oldest table olives discovered so far. We apply a geometrical morphometric analysis in reference to a coll...
Article
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Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis (Link) Schneider) wax is used for various dermatological and pharmaceutical applications. Several reports have previously shown beneficial properties of Jojoba wax and extracts, including antimicrobial activity. The current research aimed to elucidate the impact of Jojoba wax on skin residential bacterial (Staphylococcu...
Article
Full-text available
Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis (Link) Schneider) holds high industrial value and an extended cultivation trend. Despite its increased importance, there is a lack of fundamental information about its metabolic reserves and development. Our objective was to characterise metabolite allocation and fluctuations in the carbohydrate and nutrient balance of...
Article
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The physiological traits that set the tradeoff between productivity and drought adaptation in plants are still under debate. To reveal these traits, we compared the water relations of two olive (Olea europaea) cultivars: 'Barnea'- a highly productive modern cultivar; and 'Souri'- a drought-adapted traditional cultivar. We hypothesized that Souri ha...
Article
Full-text available
Phosphorus (P) availability significantly impacts olive tree reproductive development and consequential fruit production. However, the importance of P fertilization in olive cultivation is not clear, and P application is usually recommended only after P deficiency is identified. In order to determine the long-term impacts of continuous P fertilizat...
Article
Commercial avocado orchards typically consist of composite trees. Avocado is salt-sensitive, suffering from substantial growth and production depreciation when exposed to high sodium and chloride levels. Salt ions penetrate the roots and are subsequently transferred to the foliage. Hence, understanding distinct physiological responses of grafted av...
Article
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Salt stress is a major limiting factor in avocado (Persea americana) cultivation, exacerbated by global trends towards scarcity of high-quality water for irrigation. Israeli avocado orchards have been irrigated with relatively high-salinity recycled municipal wastewater for over three dec-ades, over which time rootstocks were selected for salt-tole...
Article
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Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis) is a wax crop cultivated mainly in arid and semi-arid regions. This crop has been described as an alternate-bearing plant, meaning that it has a high-yield year (“on-year”) followed by a low-yield year (“off-year”). We investigated the effect of fruit load on jojoba’s vegetative and reproductive development. For two co...
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The controlled application of olive mill wastewater (OMW) as a by-product of the olive oil extraction process is widespread in olive oil-producing countries. Therefore, a sustainable approach necessarily targets the positive effects of soil resilience between successive annual applications to exclude possible accumulations of negative consequences....
Article
'Manzanilla', today's main table olive cultivar, is traditionally harvested manually. However, manual harvesting is becoming less economically feasible due to increasing labor costs and a shortage of workers. Consequently, we examined options for mechanical harvesting of these table olives. The 'Manzanilla' fruit skin is sensitive to bruising and d...
Article
Precise phosphorus (P) application requires a mechanistic understanding of mineral effects on crops' biology and physiology. Photosynthates assimilation, metabolism, and transport require phosphorylation, and we postulated that P is critical for the bloom and fruit-set of almond trees that rely on stored carbohydrate reserves. Hence, we studied the...
Article
Full-text available
We present here the earliest evidence for large-scale table olive production from the mid-7th millennium BP inundated site of Hishuley Carmel on the northern Mediterranean coast of Israel. Olive pit size and fragmentation patterns, pollen as well as the architecture of installations associated with pits from this site, were compared to finds from t...
Article
Commercial pruning practice in jojoba plantations is traditionally dictated by maintenance requirements only. It enables machine movement between the plants and efficient harvest but is not designed to maximize long-term productivity. In this study, mechanical and manual pruning approaches were tested in two cultivars in a mature jojoba plantation,...
Article
Profits from olive oil production are expected to benefit from regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) regimes designed to optimize yield and oil quality with minimal inputs of water. We evaluated a number of potential strategies for implementing RDI including choosing phenological periods for reduced irrigation, use of midday stem water potential (SWP)...
Article
Roots are the first plant organ to encounter, sense, and respond to soil salinity. Like for many moderately salt tolerant species, roots of olive (Olea eurpaea) trees are the principal players in salt tolerance. We studied roots of mature olive trees in order to illuminate the yet vague mechanism(s) of root salt exclusion. Root structural traits we...
Article
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Pomegranate cultivation has expanded significantly in the last two decades. However, there is limited information on its fertilization requirements and the effect of macronutrient availability on its reproductive development. Two commercial pomegranate cultivars—“Wonderful” and “Emek”—were grown in 500-L containers for 3 years, using a fertigation...
Article
Lipids have a key role in a variety of physiological functions in insects including energy, reproduction, growth and development. Whereas most of the required fatty acids can be synthesized endogenously, omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are essential fatty acids that must be acquired through nutrition. Honey bees (Apis mellife...
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The global avocado industry is growing, and farmers are seeking to expand their plantations. However, many lands suitable for avocado planting were previously cultivated with hosts of the soil-borne fungal pathogen Verticillium dahliae, which is the causal agent of Verticillium wilt (VW). VW can seriously impair avocado orchards, and therefore, pla...
Article
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Quantification of actual plant consumption of nitrogen (N) is necessary to optimize fertilization efficiency and minimize contamination of earth resources. We examined the performance of fruit-bearing pomegranate trees grown in soilless media and exposed to eight N-fertigation treatments, from 5 to 200 mg N L−1. Reproductive and vegetative indices...
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Rangelands are a dominant anthropogenic land use and a main driver of natural habitat loss worldwide. Land sharing, the integration of agricultural production and biodiversity conservation, may provide a platform for managing rangelands to fulfill multiple ecosystem services. However, livestock grazing can greatly affect biodiversity and little is...
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Intensification of olive orchard management entails increased use of fertilizers, especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. In this review, plant responses to nutritional aspects, as well as environmental considerations, are discussed. Nutrient deficiency impairs production, whereas over-fertilization may reduce yields and oil quality, and in...
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BACKGROUND Nitrogen (N) fertilization influences plant growth and yield, and may also affect fruit quality. For two consecutive seasons, we examined the effects of various N fertilization levels – 5 to 200 mg L⁻¹ – on pomegranate fruit, aril and juice quality. Evaluations included fruit and aril weight, size and color, appearance of peel blemishes,...
Article
Full-text available
Summer and autumn in Israel are highly arid with not enough plants in bloom offering nectar and pollen to support the local apiary. This leads to decline in colony health and honey production. To increase food sources for honeybees, we initiated a project to clone elite Eucalyptus trees exhibiting constant and rich blooming from late summer to earl...
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To test the influence of avocado rootstocks on the scion leaf ionome, the nutritional status of avocado cultivars Hass and Ettinger grafted onto 15 rootstocks was compared over 3 years. The rootstocks were of different genetic origins (West Indian or Mexican) and were clonally or reproductively propagated. The trees were grown in a high-density orc...
Article
Full-text available
The olive growing sector is transitioning from traditional to intensive irrigated cultivation, dictating a need to reconsider orchard management practices including fertilization. Potassium (K) is an essential nutrient, typically found in high concentrations in plants. Orchard K fertilization requirements are commonly derived from the disparity bet...
Article
Full-text available
BACKGROUND Irrigation of olives increases fruit and oil yields. Due to scarcity of freshwater, low‐quality water including recycled wastewater (RWW) is utilized in orchards. Here, effects of irrigation with RWW and of fertilization on the composition and quality of olive oil were studied. RESULTS Long‐term RWW irrigation of ‘Barnea’ and ‘Leccino’...
Article
Full-text available
Plants of Eruca sativa Mill. (Brassicaceae) from desert and Mediterranean populations in Israel differ in flower color and size. In the desert habitat, the population has higher abundance of flowers with cream color and longer petals, whereas in the Mediterranean habitat, the population has higher abundance of flowers with yellow and shorter petals...
Article
Utilization of reclaimed wastewater (RWW) presents an alternative to irrigation of agricultural crops with fresh water (Fr), especially in dry areas characterized by water scarcity. While RWW often contains considerable amounts of valuable plant nutrients, it is also typically characterized by high salt content, which can impair agricultural yields...
Article
Current trends of intensification of olive cultivation including irrigation and fertigation have dictated a need to reconsider fertilization management practices. We evaluated the long-term effect of nitrogen (N) fertilization level on the productivity of field grown olive trees in an intensively cultivated orchard in order to optimize N fertilizat...
Article
Full-text available
Demand for olive oil has grown dramatically over the past decades. The accompanying increase in production has been largely due to improvement in horticultural practices by means of intensification. Modern intensive olive orchards are characterized by high yielding cultivars, high tree density, mechanization, and micro-irrigation enabling the appli...
Article
Full-text available
BACKGROUND Olive oil, a functional food, is increasingly produced from trees irrigated with water containing high concentrations of salts. We studied the effects of irrigation‐induced salinity on quality and health‐related compounds in olive oil. Trees (cv Barnea) were grown in lysimeters with continuous control and monitoring of root‐zone salinity...
Article
Full-text available
Avocado (Persea americana) has synchronously protogynous flowers: flowers open first in female phase before closing and opening the next day in male phase. Cultivars are grouped based on whether the flowers typically first open in female phase in the morning (type A), or in the afternoon (type B). However, it is known that environmental factors can...