Climate change is bringing heightened droughts, heat stress and floods for our fruit trees and Crops, this means tougher conditions and to prepare for these extremes, researchers are looking into their genomes to hunt for resilience.
Many researchers around the globe are working towards this goal.
University of Maryland -Supper Apples
University of Maryland experts have a solution for apple lovers if it gets too hot for Granny Smith.
Scientists have developed red and yellow varieties of apples that are heat resistant, an important trait as the planet continues to set high mercury records. The new varieties are also blight-tolerant, great-tasting, low-maintenance, and patent-pending, according to a report from the university.
“These apples were bred for direct-to-consumer sales. They’re not meant for the big chain stores to be shipped and stored for months,” Professor Emeritus Chris Walsh, who helped to develop the apples, said in the university story.
Heat resistance is a big win for the project, as Earth’s temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880. The heat-up has been the most intense post-1981, according to Climate.gov.
High heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, a warming South, and shorter winters in the north and east could strain apple production as well, university researchers report.
What’s more, apple picking is a hands-on job, but there aren’t as many hands to go around. “From 2016 to 2021, average annual crop production employment fell by 3% and, in apple orchards specifically, it declined by 22%,” according to USApple, an organization monitoring industry statistics.
https://today.umd.edu/apples-adapted
University of Maine – ‘super potatoes’
UMaine researchers are trying to create climate change resistant potatoes
Gregory Porter, a University of Maine professor of agronomy, says that in recent years, he and other researchers have directed more time and funding toward breeding new potato varieties that can both tolerate hotter summers and resist rot diseases caused by heavier rainfall.
“And I think our increased emphasis on the stress-tolerant, test-tolerant varieties, are going to pay even bigger dividends when we move down the road, and if projections on climate change prove to be as severe as some would indicate,” he said.
Porter says the funds will allow them to test different varieties in states such as North Carolina and Florida, whose climates may be similar to what Maine’s will be in the future.
“Seven scientists at the University of Maine, and also, seven different states participating in the research,” Porter said. “They give us those locations to help screen for these stress conditions.”
Porter said that it can take about 15 years to fully develop a new potato variety, and the new funding from the USDA will allow the team to further test the more resistant strains.
Growers in northern Maine have reported a healthy potato crop this fall, but dry weather over the past two years led to less robust harvests.