There is no known cure for Xylella, but farmers often try home remedies anyway in attempts to save their trees. Here, for example, Gaetano de Nola feeds a sick tree an infusion of beech, acacia, grapefruit, and lemon extracts in 2016.
Photograph by Patricia KühfussAngelo De Stradis, a scientist at the Italian National Research Centre (CNR) in Bari, uses a transmission electron microscope to take pictures of the surface of the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium.
Photograph by Patricia KühfussPaoloa Pailano looks on as workers burn the remnants of branches they trimmed off her infected trees in October 2016.
Giovanni and Daniela Melcarne, seen here with their daughter Daria at their olive mill in Gagliano del Capo, are working with scientists to find olive cultivars resistant to Xylella.
Maria Saponari, a researcher at the CNR in Bari, searches for answers for how to fight Xylella.
Cosimino de Luca was one of the first people to notice brown, withering leaves on his family's olive trees. Since 2013, he has lost 800 trees, some of which more than 700 years old.