The Impact of Elevated CO2 and High Temperature on the Nutritional Quality of Fruits – A Short Review

Abstract

Fruits are essential components of modern diet. Fruit nutrients provide important benefits to human in various ways for better health. Phytochemicals in fruit vary in quality and quantity depending mainly on fruit species and cultivar. Additionally, these phytonutrients can also be affected by different environmental factors including atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and temperature. The current changes and the continuous anticipated increase in the CO2 concentrations and temperature in the atmosphere has become a major challenge in crop production. The literature is rich with investigations of individual and combination effects of elevated CO2 and temperature on growth, development and yield of plants, including fruits. The purpose of this review is to evaluate the impacts of elevated CO2 and high temperature individually and interactively on nutritional quality of fruits. According to the reviewed literature, both elevated CO2 and temperature significantly influenced fruit nutrient content and availability. Elevated CO2 is expected to affect positively the fruits nutrient content, while mixed responses found for high temperature. Interaction effects of these factors are the most important since they are predicted to increase concomitantly. With available literature, the combination impact of these factors on fruit nutrients was discussed under three different hypotheses in this review. (1) high temperature may offset the positive effects of elevated CO2, (2) elevated CO2 would compensate for the negative effects of high temperature and (3) interactively, both elevated CO2 and temperature may increase or decrease the phytonutrients in fruits.