Responses and adaptations of fruit trees to high temperatures

Abstract

The tree-fruit industry is extremely vulnerable to climate change. We are already seeing that global warming is increasing the incidence and severity of extreme high temperature weather. This means fruit trees are more often experiencing damage due to high temperatures which upsets their growth and development. Heat stress disturbs not only cellular homeostasis but also a fruit’s normal physiological and metabolic processes. Together these effects are proving to be a major adverse factor that compromise both fruit yield and fruit quality. Hence, a better understanding of the response mechanisms of fruit trees to repeated incidences of high temperature is hugely significant for the sustainability of tree-fruit production, justifying this research as one of the main focuses of fruit biology today. In this review, we summarize the physiological and molecular mechanisms through which high temperatures affect tree-fruit species and discuss possible new directions for future study.