Studying Parameters Affecting Accumulation of Chilling Units Required for Olive Winter Flower Induction

With global warming, mean winter temperatures are predicted to increase. Therefore, understanding how warmer winters will affect the levels of olive flower induction is essential for predicting the future sustainability of olive oil production under different climactic scenarios. Here, we studied th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPlants (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 8; p. 1714
Main Authors Engelen, Chaim, Wechsler, Tahel, Bakhshian, Ortal, Smoly, Ilan, Flaks, Idan, Friedlander, Tamar, Ben-Ari, Giora, Samach, Alon
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland MDPI AG 01.04.2023
MDPI
Subjects
Analysis
Climate change
Cold
Cultivars
Drought
Environmental aspects
Flowering
Flowers
Fruits
Gene expression
Global warming
Moisture content
Olea europaea
Olive
Olive oil
Olives
Physiological aspects
Soil water
Temperature
Trees
Water content
Weather forecasting
Winter
Mexico
Israel
United States > US
Utah
Olea europaea
flowering
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Summary:With global warming, mean winter temperatures are predicted to increase. Therefore, understanding how warmer winters will affect the levels of olive flower induction is essential for predicting the future sustainability of olive oil production under different climactic scenarios. Here, we studied the effect of fruit load, forced drought in winter, and different winter temperature regimes on olive flower induction using several cultivars. We show the necessity of studying trees with no previous fruit load as well as provide evidence that soil water content during winter does not significantly affect the expression of an FT-encoding gene in leaves and the subsequent rate of flower induction. We collected yearly flowering data for 5 cultivars for 9 to 11 winters, altogether 48 data sets. Analyzing hourly temperatures from these winters, we made initial attempts to provide an efficient method to calculate accumulated chill units that are then correlated with the level of flower induction in olives. While the new models tested here appear to predict the positive contribution of cold temperatures, they lack in accurately predicting the reduction in cold units caused by warm temperatures occurring during winter.
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These authors contributed equally to this work.
ISSN:2223-7747
2223-7747
DOI:10.3390/plants12081714