The potential impact of global warming on summer/autumn cauliflower growth in the UK

Abstract

Separate established models of juvenility, vernalization and curd growth in cauliflower were used to estimate the duration of each growth phase in a sequence of crops of cv. White Fox for the years 1982–1992 inclusive. The models were then used to simulate what might happen to the same sequence of crops following potential rises in mean temperature of 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.2, 1.5 and 3.0°C associated with global warming. For early-emerging crops temperature rise greatly reduced the length of the juvenile and curd growth phases but had little effect on vernalization and consequently reduced the overall duration of growth. Later in the season temperature rise reduced the lengths of the juvenile and curd growth phases but increased the duration of vernalization because temperatures were beyond its optimum. The effect of this was such that in a few crops the overall duration of crop growth was increased. Increased temperatures were shown to increase significantly the variability of duration of vernalization while significantly reducing the variability of duration of curd growth. There were no significant effects on the variability of juvenility or the overall growth period.