Modelling climate change impacts, adaptation strategies and mitigation potential in horticultural crops

Abstract

Increasing weather extremes and climatic risks due to global climate change have been posing immense challenge to agricultural and horticultural crops. However, horticulture offers vital adaptation strategy for nutritional security and sustainable farm income. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the impacts of climate change on various horticultural crops and to identify the adaptation strategies to minimize the adverse effects of climate change and to maximize the positive influence of it, if any. Further, perennial fruit and plantation crops offer immense scope for climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration and modification of microclimate. In spite of recent efforts, a lot of knowledge gap exists with respect to impact assessments at regional level, corresponding adaptation strategies and mitigation potential. Lack of or non-accessibility of suitable simulation models is one such major constraint for looking forward at regional and national level. Model development (wherever necessary), improvement and integration (climate-crop-hydrological-socioeconomic models) are needed for bridging the gap between research and policy for holistic resilience at regional scale. This will help to analyse the climate resilient plants, farms and regions. Apart from these, the ecosystem services from horticulture can also be quantified using the models. Therefore, need is to strengthen and initiate focused research programmes to address the identified gaps.