{"id":119304,"date":"2024-08-22T13:12:09","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T13:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/22\/can-scientists-make-fruits-and-veggies-resilient-to-climate-change\/"},"modified":"2024-08-22T13:12:09","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T13:12:09","slug":"can-scientists-make-fruits-and-veggies-resilient-to-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/22\/can-scientists-make-fruits-and-veggies-resilient-to-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Can scientists make fruits and veggies resilient to climate change?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2023, a new type of apple made its commercial debut at a trade show in Berlin. The Tutti<\/a> is crisp, juicy and has that perfect blush tinge \u2014 a lovely cultivar that took decades to produce. But it has a bigger claim to fame: It is designed to thrive at temperatures as high as 40\u00b0 Celsius (104\u00b0 Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The apple is a product of the Hot Climate Partnership<\/a>, a collaboration between researchers and industry groups in Spain and New Zealand to create crops capable of thriving in ever-warmer climates. The group teamed up in 2002 in the midst of increasingly hot summers in the Catalan region of Spain that left apples grown there sunburned and mushy. After more than 20 years of crossbreeding for heat tolerance, the Tutti (whose research name is HOT84A1) was unveiled.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Tutti apple, the result of a 20-year, multinational partnership, is among the first fruits to be developed to thrive in a warming world.<\/span>IRTA and Venturefruit Global Ltd.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Now being grown as far afield as the United States, Chile and China, the Tutti joins a growing list of fruits and vegetables that researchers are trying to climate-proof as Earth heats up. Using tools ranging from the old-fashioned \u2014 crossbreeding, reviving Indigenous plants, heat-conscious planting techniques \u2014 to the new, such as gene editing, researchers are trying to help plant breeders and backyard gardeners alike stay one step ahead of the changing planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a tall task. What felt hot 20 years ago is now commonplace, says Joan Bonany, a pomologist at the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology outside Barcelona who helped form the Hot Climate Partnership. Memories of being able to comfortably walk between his tidy rows of apple and pear trees \u201cstretch further and further back in time,\u201d he says, and preempting the future \u201cis very much like shooting a moving target.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n