The Jordan Minister of Agriculture, Eng. Khaled Al Hnaifat, and the Executive Director of the International Olive Council (IOC), Dr. Abdellatif Ghedira, patronized the opening of a dialogue workshop entitled "The Jordanian Olive Sector: Reality, Challenges and Opportunities", which took place on August 7th 2021 at the National Agricultural Research Center (NARC) and was attended by representatives from ministries, universities and private sector institutions.

The event was aimed at presenting and discussing solutions and recommendations concerning the challenges which the Jordanian olive oil sector is facing, most importantly, the high cost of production, the need to improve and control quality, the marketing of olive oil at both local and international levels, the treatment of olive mills wastes and legal aspects governing the olive sector.

During the event the important commitment of NARC in producing scientific research outputs to find solutions to these challenges in cooperation with local and international partners was highlighted with particular refererence to LIVINGAGRO project and its in progress activities as well as expected results in terms of new products and services for the Mediterranean olive oil sector in the framework of the rising Living Laboratory 1. The role of the National Agricultural Research Center in the innovations context was additionally shown by reporting about the recent decoding of the genetic mapable of the historical olive cultivar 'Mehras', considered one of the oldest genetic olive genotypes in the Mediterranean region. in this regard it is worthy to mention that Jordan has won many awards in international competitions in reference to the high quality possessed by the Jordanian olive oil and that the rate of Jordanian production of olive oil is estimated to 25-35 thousand tons, while it ranks twelfth producing country globally and third country of production in the Arab world.