Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
quality, which are not liked by hotels and service class people. The use
of chemicals and pesticides will be more in coming. Efforts need to be
strengthened to develop suitable practices for production of quality fruits
and vegetables.
7.5
INSECT-PESTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
The realization of
climate change phenomena will be manifested in emer-
gence of new pathogens and insects, increase in incidence of diseases and
pest attack and resultantly high use of chemical pesticides to control them
will cause serious problem to ecosystem. The effectiveness of pesticides
will be low at increased temperature which will results in speedy decom-
position of organic matter in soil and affect soil fertility status. The ex-
pected climate change phenomena will affect the composition of species
and numbers of 'beneficial insects,' which helps in management of harm-
ful insect-pests. Thus, it is high time to start research programs for under-
standing the mechanism of emergence of new races/stains of pathogens
and insects particularly in reference to the horticultural crops for island
conditions. Further, the adaptive changes in beneficial insects and their
numbers need to be investigated in reference to expected climate change
phenomena for strengthening the ongoing efforts for declaration of islands
as 'Organic farming zone.'
7.6 POST HARVEST AND PRODUCT QUALITY OF
HORTICULTURAL CROPS
With expected climate change phenomena, the changes in agro-climatic
parameters will affect the cell functioning thereby crop physiology. This
will also affect the quality of the crop produce in terms of taste, appear-
ance, flavor and content of micronutrients, phytochemicals and other di-
etary elements. This may due to increase in water content in plant cells,
high incidence of photo-oxidation, synthesis of more reactive oxygen spe-
cies (ROS) and secondary metabolites, which are having negative influ-
ence on product quality like tannins, phytate and polyphenols. This will
cause astringency and rigidness in product quality and reduce post harvest
life of the horticultural crops. The processing sector will also be affected
