Climate Change and Plant Phenology: Challenges for Fruit Production

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 488

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Salento, S.P. 6, Lecce-Monteroni, I-73100 Lecce, Italy
Interests: viticulture; fruit quality; abiotic stress management; tree crops; cultivar selection; production techniques
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Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences, University of Udine, 33100 Udine, Italy
Interests: tree crops; grapevine; dormancy; budbreak; gene expression; molecular regulation

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Guest Editor
Department of Psychology and Health Sciences, Pegaso University, 80132 Napoli, Italy
Interests: agricultural and food econonomics; agricultural innovation and technology; rural development; resilience; agrifood supply chain management; multi-criteria decision making
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences, University of Udine, Via delle Scienze 206, 33100 Udine, Italy
Interests: grapevine; fruit crop dormancy; abiotic stress tolerance; spring frosts; plant physiology; molecular biology

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Guest Editor
Department of Natural Sciences, Higher Normal School of Kouba, Algiers 16308, Algeria
Interests: plant protection; climate change; ecobiology; biocontrol; pollinators health

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Guest Editor
National Research & Development, Institute for Biotechnologies in Horticulture, Stefanesti-Arges, Romania
Interests: viticulture; cultivar selection; abiotic stress management; multiplication; plant breeding; ampelography; production techniques

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is well known that climate change significantly impacts plant phenology. During summertime, the vegetation period can shift, affecting the reproductive cycle (i.e., flowering, veraison, ripening) and inducing changes in the quality of the fruits. Alongside the consequences of the exacerbation of summer stress, winter warming can cause significant damage to bud dormancy, compromising tree crop production. Bud break and, in some cases, flowering during autumn and wintertime have become common in mild winters, and the expected impact on the local economy could be catastrophic.

Thus, new strategies are urgently needed for tree crop management (e.g., pruning systems and/or timing), including considering new fruit trees for cultivation (different species and/or different cultivars) or new regions for tree crop production. Of course, we also need to quantify the socio-economic impact of phenological disfunction on the production sector, setting up strategies to preserve the sustainability of the agricultural sector.

This Special Issue focuses on the effect of climate change on tree crop systems and will include interdisciplinary studies merging agriculture with economy, molecular biology, ecophysiology, and climatology. We encourage research articles studying different economically important tree crops as well as minor/new species from different points of view. All types of articles, such as original research, opinions, and reviews, are welcome.

Dr. Laura Rustioni
Dr. Rachele Falchi
Dr. Giulio Paolo Agnusdei
Dr. Valeria De Rosa
Dr. Mounir Kherroubi
Dr. Daniel Grigorie Dinu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • tree crops
  • phenology
  • temperatures
  • sustainability
  • local economy

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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