It looked like a nuclear war scenario.

So you go there, you see dead trees with drying and dying leaves with yellow leaves all over the landscape.

Science on the menu, a podcast by the European Food Safety Authority.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Science on the Menu.

My name is Ed Bray and I work in the communications team at the European Food Safety

Authority, EFSA. Joining me today is Giuseppe Stankenelli. You are team leader for the team

dealing with the risk assessment of plant health at EFSA. Welcome to the podcast, Giuseppe.

Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here. Today we're going to be talking about a bacteria, a deadly bacteria, one so deadly in fact that it has killed more than a third of the olive trees in the southern region of Apulia in Italy.

So Giuseppe, let's start with Zellella. That's the name of the bacteria, so Zilella, fastidiosa, I understand, is the scientific name.

Can you talk about how it affects plants? How does it harm them actually?

So the name already indicate how this bacterium affect plants. It's called Xilella,

because it's a bacterium that works all his life in the Xylem

vases of the plant, which are the vases that bring the water and the nutrients from the

soil to the green part of the plants.

So how this bacterium affects the plant is by living.

And in this vases, it obstruct, close the communication between the roots

and the green part and therefore the plants is generally drying or wilting and in some cases

like in Apulia and the olives at the end even dying.

Okay, so essentially it starves plants of the water they need to survive.

Yeah, that's exactly.

And what, can you tell our listeners what does it look like actually,

one of these olive trees that has been infected by Zellella?

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