The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has established a compound to produce more than 30 universal varieties of olives which are considered the most important in olive producing countries, where their climate conditions are close to those in the Kingdom's olive-producing regions, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA). This comes within the project of the development of production, processing and marketing olives in the Kingdom, implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations within the programme of technical cooperation between the two sides. In a statement to the SPA, the FAO senior technical expert in the development of the production of olives, Dr. Al-Hashemi Al-Mehri, said that the project was initiated in 2011 and will continue until 2016 in order to improve olive cultivation in the Kingdom.