The carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua) has been part of the Mediterranean landscape for millennia. Drought-tolerant, adapted to poor soils, and capable of thriving where many crops fail, it is a species that seems almost tailor-made for the climate pressures the region faces today. Yet for decades, it has remained on the margins of agricultural research and investment, underutilised, undervalued, and under-supported.
However, that may be changing. During the EFI Mediterranean Network Forum 2026 in Valencia, the Carob Days – a dedicated workshop focused on the carob tree – brought together researchers, farmers, processors, business owners, and policymakers to take stock of the sector, exchange knowledge, build connections, and explore what it would take to reposition carob as a truly strategic resource.
The workshop gathered more than one hundred participants from more than 20 nationalities, not only from the Mediterranean region but also from across the globe, including representatives from the Americas and Oceania – underscoring the carob’s growing relevance and global interest.
Co-organised with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the Carob Days programme aimed to embrace a holistic perspective, spanning the scientific dimensions of the tree and its cultivation, as well as its economic and cultural significance.
From 25 to 27 March, participants took part in a dynamic programme of activities designed to address challenges collaboratively. These included a hackathon exercise, poster presentations, a field visit to an industrial processing site and a plantation, as well as a visit to a monumental carob tree. The programme also featured a full day of presentations showcasing the latest research and insights across multiple dimensions of carob.
Why carob, and why now?
The timing is not accidental. Climate change is accelerating across the Mediterranean basin, and the conditions the carob is naturally adapted to low rainfall, poor soils, heat, are becoming increasingly common across agricultural land where other crops are struggling. At the same time, global food markets are shifting toward plant-based, clean-label, and functional ingredients, creating new demand for exactly what carob can provide: natural thickeners, cocoa alternatives, prebiotic fibres, and antioxidant-rich extracts.
Yet despite this convergence of opportunity, the sector remains structurally underdeveloped. Genetic resources are insufficiently conserved, processing infrastructure in producing countries is minimal and the governance structures, producer organisations, quality standards, national working groups are only beginning to take shape.
What did the scientific sessions reveal?
The scientific programme for Carob Days ranged across five interconnected dimensions of the carob sector, and the breadth of expertise assembled was itself a statement of how far the field has come.
The first session addressed the tree itself: its evolutionary origins and genetic diversity, its remarkable drought-tolerance mechanisms, and its role in agroforestry systems and livestock farming. What emerged was a picture of a species far better understood scientifically than its marginal status in agricultural research would suggest, and simultaneously far more valuable than the sector has yet fully exploited.
Sessions on cultivation and climate adaptation brought together researchers and practitioners from Tunisia, Morocco, and France. They painted a clear picture of a species whose resilience is real but not unconditional: habitat modelling projects reduced suitable areas under high-emission scenarios, and expanding pest pressure adds further risk. The response must be proactive, through agroforestry systems, certified grafted planting material, and national policy frameworks that support organised producers and quality standards. Tunisia’s trajectory over the past two decades, from neglected forest resource to an emerging value chain, was presented as an instructive model.
The processing and market sessions completed the picture. Researchers from Spain, Greece, Lebanon, and Tunisia demonstrated the extraordinary bioactive potential of the whole carob tree, not just the seed that produces locust bean gum, but the pulp, the leaves, and the seed coat, each with documented functional properties relevant to food, nutraceuticals, and cosmetics. The market analysis presented twenty years of global trade data and arrived at an unambiguous conclusion: the carob value chain is deeply asymmetric, and building local processing capacity in producing countries is the most direct path to changing that.
The cultural dimension
However, when we speak about trees, their significance extends far beyond biological or scientific perspectives. What trees represent to people and communities reaches into deeper cultural, social, and symbolic dimensions. To reflect this, the event adopted a different approach to close the day: a session open to the public, dedicated entirely to the tree’s cultural and artistic life.
Professor Magda Bou Dagher Kharrat opened with a reflection on how the carob has shaped Mediterranean identity across generations, through ancestral practices, intergenerational knowledge, and lived landscapes. Drawing on a project funded by the National Geographic Society, she shared insights from a journey across the Mediterranean and offered a perspective on the intertwined destinies of people and the carob tree, exploring its genetic origins, cultural history, and symbolism. Part of the results can be explored in this interactive website.
From Crete, the audience heard how an ancient carob mill had been transformed into a museum. The Epimenides Museum is no longer just a processing site, but a living cultural space hosting theatre, music, and community events. From Sicily, Italy, an agroecological tourism initiative illustrated how carob traditions can serve as the foundation for immersive experiences of regional food heritage. Lucca Iozzi highlighted the economic potential that emerges when culture, history, and agriculture are meaningfully intertwined.
Closer to home, Valencian carob expert Vicente Serena shared ongoing efforts to document and celebrate the region’s monumental carob trees – some centuries old, many still bearing the names of the families who have cared for them. In a complementary and more artistic vein, multidisciplinary artist Nuria Ferriol presented “Macollades”, a body of work spanning paintings, drawings, photographs, and poetry, inspired by her encounters with these same trees and the communities connected to them. It’s possible to visit the virtual exhibition here.
Music and theatre were also part of the cultural spectrum presented during the journey. Guided by musicians from the Associació Cultural Dolçaina i Tabal de Chiva, participants followed an outside procession led by the sound of the dolçaina, a traditional Valencian wind instrument historically made from carob wood, its piercing, reedy tone carrying across the crowd in a moment that felt less like a conference closing and more like a ritual.
The day’s final act was a performance that defied easy description: part poetry, part gastronomy, part music. Created by Rachel Maïmouna Thomas, Jessica Valiente Tejedor, and Toni Navalón, it offered a poetic journey through the carob tree’s deep time, inviting participants to taste as well as listen, to let the fruit itself become a kind of knowledge. The carob, so often reduced to an ingredient or a statistic, was allowed to speak in a different register entirely.
The session ended with an exhibition fair where attendees laid out carob products, pods, and materials, a quiet, abundant demonstration of just how much this one tree carries across the Mediterranean world and beyond.
What comes next
Perhaps the most significant outcome of the day was the identification of priority areas where targeted investment and project development could make a real difference, from genetic resource conservation and precision water management, to local processing infrastructure, integrated R&D for consumer products, market intelligence systems, and women-led enterprise development. These are not aspirational wishes: they are concrete, funded proposals grounded in the scientific and practitioner evidence presented across the sessions.
The carob sector stands at an inflection point. The science is solid, the market conditions are favourable, and the network of researchers, farmers, and industry actors assembled at Valencia is ready to act. What the sector needs now is the institutional and financial architecture to translate that convergence into a sustainable, equitable, and productive reality, one that generates value for the communities that have stewarded these trees for centuries, and for the consumers who will benefit from their extraordinary properties.
The moment for carob has arrived.
This article was originally written by Gabriela Moscardini and Rhea Kahale, experts at the EFI Mediterranean Facility.
