Review on the Effect of Climate Change on Tomato (Solanum Lycopersicon) Production in Africa and Mitigation Strategies

Abstract

The tomato (Solanum lycopersicon) is one of the member of the Solanceae, or nightshade family, originated in South America and growing as a commercial crop around the world. Despite of its importance, tomato production has been confounding by many biotic and abiotic constraints. In this review, the effect of climate change on tomato which belongs to under abiotic factors and their mitigation strategies reviewed. The possible changes in the context of climate changes like increasing air and atmospheric temperature, change in precipitation, increasing concentration of CO₂, long-term water shortages, unsuitable soil conditions, increasing disease and pest outbreaks on crops are expected to have significant impact on tomato performance which will have a serious impact on our food security. As approved by different findings, the effect of climate change is ameliorated by different achievable and practicable strategies like selection of growing area and planting time, development of cultivar tolerant to changes in climate though breeding and farm management practice like mulching, shading or growing under protected cultivation, using advanced irrigation technologies and nutrient management. So, it is important to briefly understand the effect of climate change on tomato by researching, then developing and demonstrating the mitigation strategies.

Keywords: Carbon dioxide (CO₂), Drought, Temperature, Tomato leaf miner (TLM)