Impact of climate change on spice crops

Abstract

The effect of global warming is having its own signature in many parts of the world including India causing serious concern for the last few years. Like many agricultural and horticultural crops, spice crops are also facing the brunt of climate change. Different abiotic factors, especially temperature, rainfall, photoperiod, sunshine hours, wind, etc. directly or indirectly influence different physiological growth stages like flowering, fruit setting, fruit development, seed setting and final reproductive or vegetative yield of spice crops. High temperature causes spike shedding in black pepper, prolonged dry season may cause reduced pollination and abortion of cardamom flowers, arid conditions and violent wind are detrimental to plant growth of vanilla. Sudden temperature falls during early vegetative stage results bolting in onion. High rainfall and humidity invite pests like aphid and diseases like powdery mildew in most of the seed spices viz., coriander, fenugreek, cumin, etc. The stress effect of environment also influences the seed production and storage life of the spice crops. Major research works on drought tolerance studies has already been initiated by exploiting classical as well as modern breeding tools to find better ideotypes. Crop management aspects such as water conservation, irrigation, organic management, mulching, situation specific cropping system etc. have been redesigned to modulate the weather effects. It has also been established that proper maintenance of shade trees can minimize the impact of hail, frost and snow and even act as safeguard against wind erosion or landslides to protect the spices crops. From agriculture point of view, effects of extreme weather events on crops are to be documented so that it will be handy to planners in such reoccurrence of events to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.