🫒 Barnea

Barnea is an Israeli olive cultivar developed by breeders and selected from seedlings of unknown origin. Its other name, K-18, is its number in the breeding plot. According to the World Catalogue of Olive Varieties of the International Olive Council (IOC), Barnea accounts for 25% of Israel's intensive olive orchards; it is also planted on a small scale in Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.

The tree is easy to recognise: tall and upright, with thin fruiting branches and a sparse, open canopy. Cuttings root well, so the cultivar is grown only on its own roots. Under irrigation, young trees give a commercial crop as early as the third year, and later very high yields with moderate alternate bearing.

Barnea needs plenty of water: without irrigation in the dry Israeli summer, the tree develops poorly. The cultivar is partially self-fertile and partially resistant to olive leaf spot, and it recovers well from Verticillium wilt, but it suffers badly from leopard moth caterpillars. The trees are easy to harvest with trunk shakers.

Barnea was bred for oil: ripe fruits contain about 18%, giving 2 tonnes per hectare on average, and the yield at the mill is about 20%. The oil is considered somewhat simpler than the robust oil of Souri and the delicate European oils. After fruit thinning, Barnea is also suitable for green and black table olives, and the black ones are highly valued.

On the label. Israeli oil that says Barnea comes mostly from irrigated intensive orchards, and it is usually milder than oil from the traditional Souri cultivar.