SEOUL, April 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Rising temperatures over the next decades are expected to make conditions for cultivating apples increasingly unfavorable in South Korea.
The Rural Development Administration ran the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2020 report on the climate change scenario (SSP5-8.5) to see the change it may bring to the country’s major fruit production.
The research team made a forecast on the changing size of the total cultivable area for growing certain fruits in the country on a 10-year basis from now to the year 2090.
The results showed that cultivation plots suitable for growing apples will continue to shrink, confined to some parts of Gangwon Province, by 2070.
Pears and peaches will see an expansion of cultivable area until 2030, after which the plots will begin to shrink to limited regions in Gangwon Province by 2090.
The cultivable area for sweet persimmons, in contrast, will expand throughout the central part of the peninsula, except for mountainous regions.
Tangerines, too, will see their cultivable area move north to the coastlines along the Korea Strait (South Sea) and Gangwon Province.
Image Credit: Yonhap / Jeonju City Government / photonews@koreabizwire.com