Weather abnormalities apparently linked to global warming underline the need for plant stress research to help commercial flower growers, National Taiwan University (NTU) horticulture and landscape architecture professor Yeh Te-ming (葉德銘) said.
The nation has witnessed abnormal temperatures and rainfall patterns since late last year, Yeh said.
This winter started out unseasonably warm, particularly in November last year, which was followed by snowfall in January, a persistent cold front last month and heavy rainfall this month, disrupting the natural plant flowering cycle nationwide, Yeh said.
Photo: Lin Yen-tung, Taipei Times
For example, operators of giant taro flower farms on Yangmingshan (陽明山) in Taipei said that their crop typically blooms between March and April, but it has been delayed by about two weeks this year because of the snow in January, which damaged many buds.
Giant taros are cultivated in wet paddies and are more resistant to cold than other floral plants, the farmers said. The fact that they experienced commercial losses indicated that other flower growers likely suffered even greater disruptions that affected their plant yields, they added.
Sinyi Farmers’ Association Promotional Department instructor Chuan Chih-chien (全志堅) said that the plum blossoms in Nantou County’s Sinyi Township (信義) — a product that is important to local agriculture — had been adversely affected by the January rains, which felled many buds and sharply reduced flower yields.
In Taipei, the flowering of plum blossoms and cherry blossoms has also been delayed by the irregular weather, and the season for every flowering plant has been shortened this year, except for the Japanese camellia, the Taipei Parks and Streetlights Office said.
With global climate change, extreme cold, hot or wet conditions are certain to become more frequent, Yeh said.
Plant stress research focuses on developing agricultural techniques to counter adverse weather conditions due to global climate change, and great strides have been made in recent years, he said.
New weather patterns have already made a significant impact on the nation’s botanical environment, he said, citing as an example the upward migration of the Hypochaeris ciliata, a species that has retreated in recent years from areas with an elevation of 2,000m to 3,000m.
One of the two major methods for developing stress resistance in crops is selective breeding to develop hereditary resistance to specific adverse conditions, Yeh said.
For example, Taiwan’s heat-resistant chrysanthemums are the product of crossbreeding for cultivation in summer, he said.
The second method is to adjust the artificial environment of the plant. Today, many commercially valuable plants with a vulnerability to immersion are transplanted to greenhouses from the fields, or cultivated under a shelter until they passed the vulnerable stage of their life cycle and developed natural resistance, Yeh said.
Stress resistance research has been in development for many years and has been applied to numerous commercial plant species in the nation, including cabbages and flowers such as moth orchids and chrysanthemums, he added.
“Growers whose crops yields have been severely diminished by environmental changes should seriously consider using stress-
resistant plant growing techniques,” Yeh said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater