Native to the homonymous fraction of Gualdo Tadino, a municipality on the Umbria-Marche Appennines, Nostrale di Rigali is famous for its resistance to cold and frost. It is a quite vigorous tree, with large and dense foliage, it is wellpollinated by the Orbetana cultivar, also called Raggio (1 Orbetana every two Nostrale; Orbetana, apart from pollinating it, also enriches its organoleptic qualities: fruity, quite intense and bitter). It is suitable for mechanical harvesting.
Its high sensitivity to the olive fruit fly can be remedied in case of high altitude olive groves (800 m maximum). It was introduced to Northern Italy some years ago, thanks to its resistance to cold; however, it is continuously attacked by the bird’s eye spot disease, because of the annual falls typical of the cisalpine climate.
It is also sensitive to erineum caused by olive mites; symptoms include deformed young leaves with dark spots on their lower surface, old leaves with orange-skin upper surface, early fall of olive-blossoms, or fruit deformation. Erineum is a severe disease that can compromise the entire harvest if neglected, and can lead to virosis. Apart from sulphur, there is no other substance that can eliminate these mites from the olive tree, although recent field researches have observed total elimination of the mite with calcium polysulfide.
Inflorescences have a medium length and number of olive-blossoms; abortion of the ovary rate is very high (80%).