Climate change affects fruit crops

Agriculture is strongly dependent on climate. Global climate change mainly affects the Mediterranean, Middle East and North-West African agriculture. Considering global warming exerts direct effect on food availability, the fast growth of the world population during the last century seems to create problems in meeting human food demand and thus cause hunger problems. Many factors (e.g., use of fossil fuel, industrial residues, losses in agricultural areas, long distance transportation, improper land use, solid waste management, and loss of pasture and forest areas) also increase global warming through enhanced emission of CO₂, methane and other greenhouse gasses. The increase of temperatures is seen in both terrestrial and aquatic systems affecting the climatic events e.g., increasing the number of warm days causing desertification, decreasing the cold days, causing warm winters with insufficient chilling for temperate fruits, or more heavy rainfall causing disasters. These temperature changes influence horticultural crops as well as field crops. Küden and Kaşka (1992) stated that insufficient chilling under subtropical conditions has significant consequences such as late flowering, less bud-break, bud drop, and bare shoots. Under subtropical climatic conditions, the increase of daily temperatures up to 35-45°C during spring and summer seasons promotes double fruit formation and decreases fruit yield and quality, additionally. Double fruit formation (peach, plum, cherry and apricot) is a problem in many warm regions caused by water stress and high temperatures during the differentiation period. This period especially occurs in June, July and August in the northern hemisphere. Several studies were carried out on peaches and sweet cherries under Cukurova ecological conditions to see the effects of high temperatures on fruit quality.