Temperate Fruits in the Tropics and Subtropics

The first symposium on Temperate Fruits in the Tropics and Subtropics was organized in 1984 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since then, many more symposia have been organized, targeting the adaptability of temperate fruit crops in the subtropical and tropical conditions. Currently, in a context of climate change, the adaptability of the temperate fruit crops has become a challenge even more important than in the past. In Working Group Temperate Fruits in the Tropics and Subtropics and in its symposia, oral and poster presentations have focused on such topics as: climate change and its effect on fruit trees, climatic algorithms for prediction of chilling, development of chilling models, genetic advances in dormancy knowledge, agronomic practices aimed at adaptability to low chilling and different factors for overcoming dormancy in warm climate.

Working Group Temperate Fruits in the Tropics and Subtropics is dealing with the challenge of growing deciduous fruit species in a warm climate and the research required, including: to overcome the problems related to lack of chilling and dormancy release; the advances in genetic regulation related to dormancy release; the opportunities for breeding deciduous trees with lower chilling requirements; cultural practices to overcome dormancy release in fruit species and the effects of warm temperatures in the physiology of temperate fruit species; different methods for assessing chilling included in specific software. It covers all research on temperate species growing in tropical and subtropical environments, such as peach, apple, quince, pear, apricot, cherry, and plum.