This brief reviews the pollination aspects of both wild and domesticated fruit tree species in a global climate change context. The authors identify the link between abiotic factors such as precipitation and severe droughts in the context of tree pollination and climate change.

Global food production and climate change among other concerns are societal issues that require major research input from crop science. While suggestions are abundant on how crop science can help to resolve these issues, many of the suggestions come from people who are not actually familiar with the challenges and requirements to modify crop plants grown under field conditions to achieve the necessary improvements. Efforts to alter a gene or even several genes have very rarely proven successful in having impact on crop production under realistic field conditions. This lack of success has not...