Impacts of climate variability on fruit production: A comprehensive review

Climate change poses a significant threat to the productivity and quality of fruit crops, often exerting a more severe impact than on annual field crops due to the limited adaptive capacity of perennial species. Its influence spans various stages of fruit crop growth and development, manifesting in adverse outcomes such as sunburn damage, inadequate pollination, delayed ripening, diminished pigmentation, reduced sugar accumulation, poor fruit set, compromised quality, lowered yield, and restricted panicle emergence, particularly under conditions of terminal heat stress and water scarcity. This comprehensive review investigates the multifaceted effects of climate variability including fluctuations in temperature, rainfall patterns, humidity levels, and evaporation rates on fruit crops across temperate, subtropical, and tropical agro-climatic zones. By exploring the complex interactions between climatic factors and physiological processes such as flowering behavior, this study provides in-depth insights into the underlying mechanisms governing climate-crop responses. A key challenge in synthesizing this information lies in the scarcity of long-term, crop-specific datasets and the high variability in regional microclimates and management practices, which limit the generalization of climate impacts across fruit species. Despite these constraints, the review makes significant contributions by consolidating scattered evidence, identifying vulnerable phenophases and highlighting crop-specific sensitivities to climatic stressors. It further emphasizes the urgency of implementing adaptive strategies and developing climate-resilient varieties to safeguard the growth, phenology, yield, and quality attributes of fruit crops under an increasingly unpredictable climate regime