Humble herbs like thyme, sage, oregano and savory could rise in status in the Mediterranean world if high-tech scientific research at the European Community’s Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Hania (MAICH) is successful.
Developing more productive strains of aromatic and medicinal herbs for cultivation on marginal land round the Mediterranean is a high priority re-search project on the institute agenda.
“The idea is to find the best type of each plant in order to give maximum income to growers,” says Dr Haroula Kargiolaki, a plant physiologist with a doctorate from Oxford. She co-ordin-ates the project which was launched in 1991.
These common herbs, and others like juniper and laurel, are ideally adapted to marginal Mediterranean land, managing to grow on rocky ter-rain and needing only a few drops of water. They have been chosen as the focus of attention in the context of a broad effort to preserve and conserve the flora of Crete, with emphasis on endemic plants.
Researchers collect samples, then extract the essential oils which impart their distinctive pungency. An assess-ment is made of factors affecting growth and genetic variations are noted. When identification is unsure, help is sought from botanists at Patras Uni-versity, from Athens University or the institute next door for tropical plants and olive trees, a National Research Foundation enterprise.
Analysis of the herbs’ chemical composition is carried out at a sister institute, the Montpellier Agronomic Institute in the south of France. Ger-mination experiments on the selected species are the responsibility of the Marie Curie University in Paris, and forestry geneticists at the Aristotelian University in Thessaloniki conduct breeding experiments to find the most productive cultivars.
The institute team is building up a herbarium of the 2000 plants known to grow in Crete, seeking out particularly the 165 species (or 210 counting sub-species) native to the island. “This will be really useful,” says Kargiolaki, comparing the undertaking to that of the 18th-century plant biologist, James Smithson, whose herbarium is preserved at Oxford, and after whom the Smithsonian Institution in Washington is named.
On top of research, the herb scientists offer a diploma and master’s degree course of study (in English) for B-grade and above graduate students from Greece and abroad.
Budding scientists study the biochemistry, ecology and uses of aromatic and pharmaceutical plants learning to identify plant families and gaining skill in pharmacognosy and ethnobotany. The biotechnological applications and economics and marketing of the plants are also covered.
Dimitris Gerasopoulos, head of horti-cultural technology 
Director Dr Alkinoos Nikolaidis 
Director of MAICH since its establishment in 1985, Dr Alkinoos (after the Homeric king of the Phaeacians) Nikolaidis is an agricultural economist wizard who seems purpose-bred for the job. Of Asia Minor refugee parentage, he was born in Corfu and took his first degree in plain agriculture from Thessaloniki. He then gained a doctorate in agricultural economics at Oxford and continued research study at the Montpellier Agronomic Institute. Moving across the Atlantic, he did a second master’s degree in computer studies, specializing in the logic of optimization at Pennsylvania State University. In Boston he took a third master’s degree in international trade and finance.
The Agronomic Institute became located in Crete, he says, following the initiative of Greek Europarliamentarian Michalis Papayiannakis, formerly professor of agricultural development at the Montpellier Institute. “We see ourselves as part of a co-operative venture of peripheral countries of the Mediterranean,” explains Nikolaidis. Along with Montpellier, Saragossa in Spain and Bari in Italy, MAICH has formed a network that blooms under the auspices of an EC program for the development of infras-tructure and activities involving EC member states with non-EC countries bordering the Med.
Cross-border agronomic schemes within the EC are also sponsored. For example, a French-German irrigation project is on-going and so is a Greek-Italian-British berry research, aiming to develop strains of raspberries, black currants and others of the Rubus genus for off-season cultivation on marginal Mediterranean land.
MAICH has run short courses off-campus in Cyprus and Syria on aspects of Mediterranean agriculture. On its own turf it acts as a stimulus for Greeks to apply for EC funding.
As well as pressing on with research, the institute also runs a graduate teaching program for up to 120 students, about 40 percent Greek, others mostly from other Mediterranean countries.
“MAICH success shows what can be achieved in Greece with the backing of all political parties,”’ says Nikolaidis. “The institute has a kind of independence due to its international character and the EC funding.”
Top priority research project is on olive oil, given fresh impetus last year (1992) by the catastrophic collapse of olive oil prices, down from 1250-1400 drachmas in 1991 to 540 a litre, says Dr George Baourakis, economics depart¬ment co-ordinator.
Baourakis is a prime example of the top-flight Greeks involved: on top of a first degree in mathematics, with a second in computer studies and a third in economics, he remains disarmingly modest and unaffected.
His department offers management or policy options for post-graduate study, emphasis on maths and stats, with modules on consumer theory and the organization of the food industry, Policy study extends to the role of the agricultural sector in European integration and the history of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and possible regional reform of its programs. The global implications of EC policy are discussed, while alternative agricultural technologies and the green revolution are not ignored.
Students have done case studies of single market demand for citrus fruit and the cost of off-season tomato pro-duction. The motives for mergers in the EC food industry and merger policy in Greek food manufacturing have been analyzed.
Of 1991 graduates, 19 gained diplomas, 15 Greek, four foreign; ten took a master’s degree, seven Greek and three foreign, with similar numbers in the previous two years.
Complementing the researches of economists, institute horticultural tech-nologists are using every tool of mod-ern science to improve olive oil processing and production, with particular attention given to pesticide-free olive oil.
Extracting the sort of olive oil European consumers most want is what Dimitris Gerasopoulos and his depart-ment are most concerned with. “Quality in general is our goal: quality of the processed product,” he says. “We have created modern laboratories, with state-of-the-art equipment: laborator-ies are the key to our researches.”
On the organic cultivation of olives, he says that although much literature exists on the control of pests without spraying, in practice it is difficult be-cause olive trees are grown so exten-sively. Aerial spraying is much simpler, but piecemeal spraying, which is quite common, is being considered.
Pest-control research is boosted by entomologists from the neighboring in-stitute, all too familiar with the various insects and mites damaging olive trees.
Co-operation is also helping research into better ways of processing olive oil. “The idea, in principle, is to use the methods of the past with today’s technology,” says Gerasopoulos. The scientists hope to set up an old Cretan stone olive press for demonstration purposes.
Aware that in some ways they can-not improve on nature, the horticultur-ists are checking out prime olive grow-ing areas. As with fine wines, the best olive oil is known to come from olive trees growing in certain districts char-acterized by particular soil composition and perhaps microclimate.
New crops for introduction in Crete and other poorer Mediterranean regions are also being researched to supp¬ly the European market. Since jojoba oil replaced whale sperm oil in industry, for instance, Europe has had to rely on Chile for its requirements, says Gerasopoulos. A trial plantation of jo-joba shrubs in the Sfakia region has thrived in the past ten years and 200 hectares more are planned.
Off-season raspberry growing is being tried out in a project to adapt north European berry fruit to the Mediterranean terrain and climate, with the aid of genetic engineering, DNA cloning and clonal propagation.
The horticulture department will host an international symposium on fruit and vegetable quality in Septem-ber, part of its function in the network of agronomic institutes linked to the parent body, the Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies, in Paris.
Teaching covers subtropical crops, citrus fruit and olives, with environ-mental issues, water management, agrometeorology and genetics included in the course.
Renewable natural resources are researched under George Lyritzis. Re-gional forests and maquis are being classified and mapped with satellite data. A forest fire weather station net-work is planned. Genetically improved cypress trees (they have been suffering from parasites lately) are being bred as a means of reconstituting the Mediterranean environment.
Conservation, land-use planning and ecology are also covered. A mod-ule on the ecology, forestry and grazing of mountain areas includes field trips. A resource use module covers wood-cutting and processing, forest byproducts like cork, resin and honey, wildlife conservation and the management of lakes and streams.
Pride of place for MAICH research achievements is accorded the evergreen plane tree bred by Constantine Panet-sos, Professor of forest genetics at Thessaloniki’s Aristotelian University. Panetsos succeeded in isolating the pa¬rent genes from the evergreen plane tree of Gortyna, one of the several plane trees on Crete famed since antiquity for never losing their leaves.
Scientists explain the phenomenon as a genetic aberration, says Dr Nikolaidis, though in legend it is credited to the intervention of Zeus, who retired to the shade of the Gortyna tree with Europa after bearing her over the sea in the guise of a bull.
