Climate profiling and change analysis of the Elgin-Grabouw-Vyeboom-Villiersdorp (EGVV), Koue Bokkeveld (KBV) and Langkloof (LK) production areas specific to Pome fruit

The science behind exactly where climate change is occurring in the pome industry or what the potential impacts might be is not fully established. The project aims to develop and leverage TerraClim climate data to improve the understanding of the environmental conditions and potential impact of climate change of the EGVV, KBV & LK pome production areas.

Weather station data for each region was ingested, standardised, cleaned, gap-filled and then used to interpolate eight years of wall-to-wall 40m climate surfaces for each region. Pome-specific bioclimatic indices were developed from these layers, which were extracted with climate and terrain statistics and interpreted for each region.

Eight years of hourly, daily and monthly temperature surfaces; eight years of industry-informed pome-specific bioclimatic index surfaces; six years of relative humidity, rainfall and solar radiation surfaces; terrain surfaces developed and extracted for each region.

A review of bioclimatic indices and seasonal variability per region and a review and comparison of the long-term environmental profiles per region.

The expansion and improvement of the database and interpolation methodologies continue to advance the core products. This allows for expanding the analyses of the data for better decision support at an industry body level. TerraClim, especially the suitability tool, has received very positive feedback in the pome fruit industry as it supports decisions based on detailed environmental profiling.

TerraClim data reveals significant regional climate variability affecting pome fruit production, highlighting the need for detailed seasonal mapping and integration with production data to optimize agricultural strategies.