Authors: Eike Luedeling Jens Gebauer Andreas Buerkert
Publish Date: 2009/04/10
Volume: 96, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 219-237
Abstract
Fruit production systems that rely on winter chill for breaking of dormancy might be vulnerable to climatic change We investigated decreases in the number of winter chilling hours 0–72°C in four mountain oases of Oman a marginal area for the production of fruit trees with chilling requirements Winter chill was calculated from longterm hourly temperature records These were generated based on the correlation of hourly temperature measurements in the oases with daylength and daily minimum and maximum temperatures recorded at a nearby weather station Winter chill was estimated for historic temperature records between 1983 and 2008 as well as for three sets of synthetic 100year weather records generated to represent historic conditions and climatic changes likely to occur within the next 30 years temperatures elevated by 1°C and 2°C Our analysis detected a decrease in the numbers of chilling hours in highelevation oases by an average of 12–95 h/year between 1983 and 2008 a period during which according to the scenario analysis winter chill was sufficient for most important species in most years in the highest oasis In the two climate change scenarios pomegranates the most important tree crop received insufficient chilling in 13 and 75 of years respectively While production of most traditional fruit trees is marginal today with trees barely fulfilling their chilling requirements such production might become impossible in the near future Similar developments are likely to affect other fruit production regions around the worldThis article is published under an open access license Please check the Copyright Information section for details of this license and what reuse is permitted If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and reuse information please contact the Rights and Permissions team
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