Wild resources and predictions for strawberry production in light of climate change and global pollinator decline

Strawberry is by far the most important soft fruit crop in Sweden.

This project addresses three specific threats that climate change and the current global pollinator decline raise to strawberry production: 1) reduced pollination service, 2) reduced flower production, and 3) increase in pollen sterility. All three threats signify reduced strawberry number and quality for farmers.

Our project will provide genetic resources mediating reproductive tolerance to climate change and create predictive models that can assess near-future integrated plant pest and pollinator mitigation practices to incorporate changes in plant-pollinator and herbivore interactions in light of climate changes.

To achieve this, we plan two experimental setups in this project.

One outdoor experiment, surveying strawberry varieties across five common gardens set up along a latitudinal gradient from northern to southern Europe, to survey plant-pollinator and herbivore ecological interactions across real-time temperature and drought differences.

And one controlled indoor experiment with 200 varieties, to identify the underlying genes of stable flower and pollen production under the predicted Swedish heat and drought conditions in the coming decade with Genome Wide Association Studies.

Overall, this will give us a comprehensive understanding of the reproductive implications of climate-induced changes and provide tools that will prepare Swedish strawberry farmers for future production.