The bacterium that redrew the Salento skyline

Xylella fastidiosa was detected on Salento olive trees in October 2013, the first documented case in Europe, and the landscape between the towns has been changing ever since.

October 2013, and what was found

The bacterium was identified on olive trees in Puglia in October 2013, the first documented case of Xylella fastidiosa in Europe. The organism is subspecies pauca, strain ST53, known in Italy as CoDiRO, from the name of the syndrome it produces: rapid desiccation of the olive.

The plant dies. There is no treatment that saves an infected tree, which is why every measure taken since is about movement and boundaries rather than cure.

Olive is not its only host. The EFSA database lists 696¹ host species across 88 botanical families, and citrus, vines and a long list of ornamentals are on it.

What a visitor actually sees

Between the coastal towns of Salento you will see standing dead trees, cleared ground and young replanted rows, alongside groves that were centuries old before 2013. That is the honest description of the drive.

Nobody should sell you that landscape as picture material, and nobody should pretend it is not there. It is the working countryside of a region that has been pulling up and replanting its olive groves since 2013, and it looks like it.

The towns, the coast, the beaches and the food are not affected by any of this. The change is agricultural and it is inland.

More than €15 million, and a buffer cut from 5 km to 2 km

Puglia committed more than €15 million to its Xylella action plan for 2024 to 2026. Monitoring is carried out by ARIF, the regional agency for irrigation and forestry, and compensation is provided both to nurseries and to growers hit by plant health orders.

Applying EU regulation 2024/2504², the region reduced the band of the infected zone in which containment measures apply from 5 kilometers to 2 kilometers. That is a narrower strip of obligations, and it changes what a landowner inside it has to do.

Leccino is the variety identified as tolerant, which is why the replanting you see is not a copy of what stood before. A tolerant variety is not an immune one, and the groves going in now are a different agricultural bet.

The numbers we are not giving you

The number of dead olive trees is not printed on this page, because no primary source we could read publishes it: not the EFSA file, not the 2024 to 2026 regional plan. The figures in circulation are repeated everywhere and sourced nowhere, and a number of that weight has to come from a document.

The delimited area surface is in the same position. The regional decrees with the current boundaries are published as PDFs on the regional bulletin, and the region's dedicated portal was not usable when we checked on September 2, 2026: the certificate did not match the hostname and the home page redirected to a login.

So this page gives you the pathogen, the strain, the date, the money and the regulation, and stops. That is what is documented.

The word CoDiRO, and why you will see it

CoDiRO is the Italian acronym for the syndrome, complesso del disseccamento rapido dell'olivo, the rapid olive desiccation complex, and it is the word you will see on road signs, plant health notices and farm gates across the infected area.

Knowing it saves confusion on the ground. The bacterium is Xylella fastidiosa subspecies pauca ST53; CoDiRO is what the trees do afterward. Notices posted under the 2024 to 2026 plan use both terms, and the containment obligations attach to the zone rather than to the individual grove.

Why it matters to a trip in 2026

An itinerary built on photographs older than October 2013 will not match what is outside the car window, and that mismatch is worth knowing before you turn inland.

Plan the coast and the towns as you would anywhere, and treat the inland drive as what it is: a landscape in the middle of being rebuilt with a different tree. It is worth seeing, and it is not scenery.

The other Puglia pages start at Puglia.

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