Effect of changing climatic scenario on vegetable production and mitigation strategies: A review

It is estimated that nearly a third of global arable land has been lost to soil erosion and pollution during the past 4 decades. Vegetables in are general more sensitive to climatic extremes such as temperature fluctuations, biotic and abiotic stresses, reduced irrigation-water availability, flooding, drought, and salinity. Under changing climatic situations, crop failures, shortage of yields, reduction in quality, and increasing pest and disease problems are common, and they render vegetable cultivation unprofitable. It has been estimated that the number of pollinators has reduced due to combined stress from adverse climatic events and habitat loss. As many vegetables rely on pollinators, a complete loss of pollinators has been predicted to reduce vegetable supply by 16% (Smith et al., 2015). Therefore, reduced production and productivity invite a crisis in food reserve in the near future, and agriculture is faced with the challenge of food/nutritional security to meet the requirement for the ever-growing world population which is projected to reach approximately 9.7 billion in 2050. Hence, there is an urge to develop an understanding of the impacts and implications of climate change on vegetable production for timely intervention to ameliorate its negative effects. Farming practices such as planting of drought-resistant varieties of crops, crop diversification, change in cropping pattern and calendar of planting, improved irrigation efficiency, adopting soil conservation measures to conserve soil moisture, nutrient management, tillage/residue management, improved stress tolerance through grafting, developing climate-resilient vegetables, climate profiling through genomics and biotechnology, engineering stress tolerance, etc are to be practiced to boost sustainable production of vegetables to meet the challenges put forth by the global climatic change. Breeding strategies such as identifying and strengthening local breeds that have adapted to local climatic stress and feed sources and improving local genetics through cross-breeding with heat and disease tolerant breeds.