Are fruit orchards suitable for carbon sequestration?

What is it about?

The objective of this contribution is to evaluate whether fruit trees are a suitable choice / alternative for carbon fixation/ sequestration in times of anthropogenic climate change. Criticism argues that forests sometimes only provide temporary carbon fixation. This can be the case, when the wood /timber is used for charcoal, logs for fireplaces. Low quality timber is sometimes used only once e.g. in the building industry and then discarded, i.e. burned with the CO2 emitted back into the atmosphere, making forests a 80-100 year carbon stock/sink. (Re-) Forestation is very useful and suitable for derelict land, to prevent erosion or parklands for recreation but require sufficient rainfall, a problem in times of climate change; in semi-arid areas, forestation can hence pose the risk of forest fires. But if (re-) forestation competes with agricultural land, priority is given for food production in a world of increasing population and food shortage. The question arises as to the dual purpose use of fruit trees, providing us with fresh fruit and concomitantly fixing carbon. In a comparison, forest trees often have a longer lifespan than fruit trees. Principally, one can distinguish short long-lived, evergreen fruit trees such as Citrus and olive in semi-arid climate with 60-80 years. The majority of deciduous fruit trees in pome or stone fruit orchards have a life-span of 20-60 years. Over their life-span, fruit trees can easily fix 12 t C/ha in their trunks. Each harvest removes from 1 t C/ha in cherry, 3-4 t in apple to 6 t C/ha per year. In deciduous fruit trees, mostly in temperate zone climate, leaves preserve most of their carbon and nitrogen skeletons by translocation into the woody perennial parts of the trees. These reserves are re-mobilised in the subsequent spring for flowering. The question arises, whether and how different orchard management systems could contribute to increasing carbon fixation without adversely affecting fruit quality and yield.

Featured Image