Advances in Management Practices to Reduce Climate Change Impacts on Mediterranean Fruit Crops

Plant growth, yield, and fruit quality depend mainly on environmental (e.g. temperature, precipitation, radiation, and humidity) and anthropogenic factors (e.g. management practices and socio-economic issues). Besides plant physiological performance, abiotic stress factors can also affect fruit crops' phenology timing and duration, compromising yield and the potential fruit quality by imbalanced sugar accumulation and production of secondary metabolites and quality traits. In fact, climate change is already impacting several agricultural areas worldwide, and the foreseen climate projections are pushing forward the current challenges for sustainable production patterns. The increasing incidence of extreme weather events (e.g., heat waves, floods, prolonged drought, spring frosts) over the growing cycle has also raised the concern for searching for sustainable solutions that growers and farmers could apply to sustain yield and fruit quality in the upcoming years.

Though plants present several defense mechanisms to withstand unfavorable environmental conditions, the negative impacts of climate change could overlap their tolerance capacity and natural resilience. Therefore, researchers have developed several long-term strategies (e.g. varietal and clonal selection and re-zoning of crops) and optimized current management practices, encompassing new plant material, soil and canopy management, foliar application of protectants, elicitors, and bio stimulants, and alternatives to reduce irrigation needs (e.g. deficit irrigation) and avoid radiation and high-temperature damages (e.g. shading nets and application of solar protectants).

This Research Topic aims to bring together a set of cutting-edge research articles that shows some of the most significant advances in agricultural management practices, aiming at sustainability and climate change adaptation in fruit crop production and quality in a context of climate change under field and/or controlled conditions. Researchers are invited to contribute with Original Research, Reviews, and short communications related to plant stress physiology, biochemistry, stress-related metabolites, analytical methods, defense responses, as well as fruit quality parameters.