Impacts of climate change on vegetable production and ways to overcome them

Vegetables play a key role in food security and nutrition as the food system shifts from food quantity to dietary quality and health benefits. One of the main reasons for the low production and declining average yields of most vegetable crops is climate change. Important limiting factors in maintaining and increasing vegetable crop yields are rising temperatures, reduced water availability for irrigation, flooding and salinity. Under changing climatic conditions, crop failures, declining quality and increasing pest and disease problems are becoming commonplace and making vegetable production unprofitable. Since many physiological processes and enzyme activity are temperature dependent, they will be greatly affected. Drought and salinity are two important effects of rising temperatures that reduce vegetable crop yields. These impacts of climate change also affect the emergence of pests and diseases, host-pathogen interactions, distribution and ecology of insects, timing of emergence, migration to new locations, and their ability to overwinter, all of which become a major barrier to vegetable production. To mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on the productivity and quality of vegetable crops, sound adaptation strategies need to be developed. Emphasis should be placed on the development of production systems that improve water efficiency and are adapted to hot and dry conditions. Technological practices, such as mulching with crop residues and plastic materials, help maintain soil moisture. Excessive soil moisture due to heavy rains becomes a serious problem that can be solved by growing crops in raised beds. An effective way to solve these problems is to create genotypes that are resistant to high temperatures, moisture, salinity and resistance to climatic conditions, using traditional and non-traditional breeding methods, genomics, biotechnology, etc.