How can we reach enhanced climate resilience considering sunburn and heat damage in fruit and vegetables production?

Global radiation and temperature rise cause huge risks for fruit production, affecting the fruit quality, storability, resulting in food waste. The varying training systems of woody plants and efficacy of physical protection measures, based on shielding effects, influence the heat distribution in canopies and the crop response in varying climate conditions. Time series analysis of fruit temperature in heat periods due to the global warming are needed. In SHEET, terrestrial remote sensing is employed to provide the necessary high spatio-temporal resolution of data considering the canopy and particularly fruit surfaces. Remote sensing methods capture light detection and ranging (LiDAR), photogrammetry including depth information (RGB-D), thermal imaging as well as weather station and microclimate sensors. The remote data is supported by means of laboratory analysis on the fruit damage occurrence in varying climate, while taking into account the canopy architecture and physical protection measures. A temperature distribution model based on thermodynamic approach and an artificial neural network model to link the temperature distribution with the fruit damage is developed. The climate and output data are provided with a free mobile App to the growers.