Horticultural Crops in a Warming World: Impacts, Adaptive Strategies and Resilience Pathways

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly recognised as one of the most formidable challenges confronting global agriculture, with horticultural crops—comprising fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, and medicinal plants—particularly vulnerable to its multifaceted impacts. Rising mean temperatures, altered precipitation regimes, elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, and the heightened frequency of extreme weather events are collectively reshaping the biophysical environments in which horticultural crops are cultivated. This review synthesises current scientific understanding of how climate warming affects the physiology, productivity, phenology, and quality of horticultural crops, whilst critically examining the adaptive strategies and resilience pathways available to stakeholders at farm, national, and global levels. This review was conducted through a structured search of peer-reviewed academic literature available across multiple bibliographic databases including Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and PubMed. Key impacts discussed include heat-induced reproductive failure, chilling requirement deficiencies in temperate fruit trees, drought-mediated yield penalties, phenological mismatches, and the expansion of pest and disease pressures under warmer conditions. Adaptive responses encompass genetic improvement, precision horticulture, protected cultivation, deficit irrigation strategies, and agroecological interventions. Resilience pathways are explored through the lenses of digital agriculture, policy and governance frameworks, and systems-level approaches. The review underscores that effective mitigation of climate risks in horticulture demands integrated, multi-scale responses that bridge plant science, agronomy, technology, and socio-economic governance.