C-DRONE GUIDE · 15 SEPTEMBER 2026

Sollies Fig AOP and drones: irrigation, rust and the Medfly, prices

On the foothills of the Gapeau river, between Solliès-Pont and Hyères, around a hundred growers farm an unusual appellation: a single variety, the Bourjassotte noire, across a strictly delimited area of 15 communes in the Var. The Sollies Fig is one of the few French fresh-fruit AOPs built on one single fruit cultivar rather than a terroir open to several varieties — which makes every vigour or irrigation anomaly all the more readable from one orchard to the next. Here is what a drone survey concretely brings to this very specific sector, where drip irrigation shapes fruit quality as much as its most feared disease — rust — and where a central pest, the Mediterranean fruit fly, escapes any aerial camera entirely.

Published on 15 September 2026, reviewed on 16 September 2026 — regulations in force as of September 2026.

A single-variety AOP across 15 communes of the Solliès basin

Recognition of the Sollies Fig dates back to the decree of 28 June 2006 on the approval of controlled-designation-of-origin figs, confirmed by the AOC decree n° 2010-1164 of 29 September 2010. EU recognition followed a year later: the Commission's Implementing Regulation (EU) n° 1367/2011, of 19 December 2011, registered the name as a protected designation of origin — the AOP mention has been mandatory on labelling since 1 January 2012. The specifications require a single variety: the Bourjassotte noire, locally known as "Violette de Solliès", recognisable by its near-black skin and dense red flesh.

The production area covers 15 communes in the Var, concentrated in the Solliès basin and the Gapeau valley: Belgentier, Carqueiranne, Cuers, La Crau, La Farlède, La Garde, Hyères, La Londe-les-Maures, Le Pradet, Solliès-Pont, Solliès-Toucas, Solliès-Ville, La Valette-du-Var, and partly Pierrefeu-du-Var and Puget-Ville. About a hundred growers farm roughly 140 hectares of orchards there — some 35,000 fig trees — for a total output of around 1,500 tonnes a year; the Copsolfruit cooperative reported about 1,000 tonnes for the 2025 season, described as early and already at mid-season peak. The defence syndicate runs, together with the town of Solliès-Pont, Toulon Provence Méditerranée and the chamber of agriculture, a land-expansion policy to meet what it considers sustained demand — which means more young plantings to track alongside the mature orchards.

Drip irrigation and water stress: what aerial mapping objectifies

Fig trees in the AOP are very largely irrigated by drip lines, with a water requirement estimated at 600 to 700 millimetres spread over the growing season — roughly six months, from April to harvest. The stakes go beyond yield: during marked water stress, a poorly managed deficit favours fruit splitting, which makes it unfit for the fresh market. Conversely, uneven irrigation across a single orchard — clogged emitters, uneven pressure along a line — creates patches of uneven vigour invisible from the ground until a visual symptom has already appeared.

A multispectral pass (NDVI or comparable indices) maps this vigour heterogeneity plot by plot; a thermal flight, in addition, approaches the stomatal closure that precedes visible water-stress symptoms. A landmark review published in 2021 in Precision Agriculture by Chunhua Zhang and a team from Wageningen University catalogues established drone uses in orchard management — vigour mapping, disease detection, yield estimation — across the whole growing cycle (see the study on Google Scholar). No drone study specifically dedicated to fig trees was identified: this is a broadened angle, transposed from more widely studied tree orchards (apple, hazelnut, citrus), not direct evidence on Ficus carica. For an orchard of a few hectares — the average size of an AOP holding — this mapping mainly serves to prioritise emitter-line inspection rounds rather than replace the tensiometer monitoring already in place among equipped growers.

Fig rust and the Medfly: what a drone can spot, and what it will never see

Two threats dominate the fig orchard, and a drone does not handle them the same way. Fig rust (Cerotelium fici), a fungus favoured by humidity, causes premature leaf drop and directly weighs on the quality and quantity of the harvest: it is a foliar disease, in principle within reach of aerial imagery. A study published in 2023 in AgriEngineering by Yenny Rodriguez-Gallo and co-authors demonstrates drone-based RGB detection of a foliar rust — that of coffee (Hemileia vastatrix) — using dedicated image processing (see the study on Google Scholar). The principle — spotting rust outbreaks by aerial imagery before they spread across the whole canopy — is transposable, but this is an explicit extrapolation: pathogen and host are entirely different, and no protocol has validated this detection on fig trees.

The honesty clause. The Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata) is a central pest of the sector: the female lays eggs inside the fruit, the larva develops entirely inside it, leaving only a small hole on the surface — the fruit reaches apparent ripeness while being unfit for sale. This attack plays out inside the fruit, beyond the reach of any aerial camera, RGB, multispectral or thermal: no drone detects an egg-laying event or a larva. Monitoring stays ground-based, through trapping (pheromone or food-attractant traps), the only recognised method to assess fly pressure and trigger an intervention. The same applies to the waxy scale insect (Ceroplastes rusci), considered the species' most concerning pest, whose colonies settle on branches and largely escape any useful resolution from the air. A drone documents canopy vigour and can, subject to the extrapolation above, flag a declining area for priority rust inspection — it never replaces fly trapping or close branch-level observation.

Young plantings from the expansion drive, who commissions this survey, method and 2026 prices

Demand mainly comes from the AOP growers themselves — around a hundred holdings, often just a few hectares each —, from the Copsolfruit cooperative which centralises part of the marketing, from the defence syndicate and from the Var chamber of agriculture as part of the land-expansion policy run with Solliès-Pont and Toulon Provence Méditerranée. On a mature orchard, the typical mission combines a multispectral vigour pass and, when risk is elevated, a thermal flight targeted at irrigation. On a young planting from the expansion programme, the priority is often different: an orthophoto or surface model is used to count trees and track the geometry of the planting, ahead of any vigour question.

Ranges observed in France in 2026, excluding VAT:

These missions build on our precision agriculture by drone offer and on the technique detailed in our guide to drone photogrammetry and 3D modelling; the regulatory information on this page reflects the rules in force in September 2026. After a hail or storm episode, our guide to crop insurance and climate loss details what a drone survey brings to the claim file. For a grower, the cooperative or the defence syndicate, request a quote stating the area, the orchard's age — young planting or mature orchard — and the priority objective, irrigation or vigour.

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