Fruit Production under climate changing scenario in India: a review.

Abstract

Global warming and climate change are the major concerns today for the mankind. The extreme weather events are universal ; weather events like increased global temperatures, melting the polar ice, increased sea water levels, drought and floods, hailstorms, tornados, causes severe loss to the crops and human beings. The present day cultivars / varieties may perform very poorly in an unpredictable manner due to aberration of climate. Alimost all fruit crops are generally cultivated under open field conditions, with the climate change commercial production of these crops may severely affect. Increased temperatures effect on establishment, growth and yield of the majority of fruit crops. Due to high temperature physiological disorder of fruit will be morepronounced like Spongy tissue of mango, fruit cracking of litchi, flower and fruit abscission. Air pollution also affects the yield of several fruit crops and increases the intensity of certain physiological disorder like black tip of mango. Very low winter temperatures effect on same tropical fruit crops like banana, causes chilling injury and choke throat. Hence there is a need to protect these valuable crops for sustainability against the climate change scenario. To sustain the productivity,modification of present horticultural practices and greater use of greenhouse technology are some of solutions to minimize the effect of climate change. Development of new hybrids, cultivars of fruit crops tolerant to abiotic and biotic factors, producing good yield under stress conditions, as well as adoption of hi-tech horticulture and judicious management of resources will be the main strategies to meet this challenge.