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Asparagus picked up at the end of February, harvest increasingly early: the natural order of seasonal fruits and vegetables seems disturbed. An effect of climate change, explains Bénédicte Quilot-Turion, director of research at INRAE.
Formerly emblematic of spring, they arrived on our stalls from April … But here they are now on our plates much earlier: in This Landes exploitationThe first asparagus was picked up at the end of February, a month before the usual season! And last year, the earliest had pointed their nose here a week ago …
And the phenomenon is the same for the vine: D‘after theNational observatory on the effects of global warmingThe harvest in France takes place 18 days earlier on average than 40 years ago. And the wine itself evolves, becoming stronger.
“We have observed it for several years now, and on many fruit and vegetable species,” confirms Bénédicte Quilot-Turion, research director at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE). The vine “is the typical case, with the harvest dates” which advance almost every year.
The growth of fruits and vegetables is directly linked to temperatures.
Bénédicte Quilot-Turion, researcher at INRAE
This evolution is logical, explains the researcher, because “the growth of fruits and vegetables is directly linked to temperatures, suddenly the more the cumulative temperatures is high over a period, the earlier the harvests”. The date of the harvests will therefore probably continue to move forward, as and when the global warming evolution.
A change that is not without bringing a lot of anxieties to certain operators, at the forefront of which the arboriculturalists: the sweetness arriving in March, the buds hatch … and may grill at the first stroke of end of winter. In April 2021, the orchards of the Drôme and the Ardèche had thus been ravaged overnight.
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