Fruits of global warming for UK

It's the year of the apricot. In the remorseless march of global warming, a small golden fruit may make 2005 one of the most significant years for Britain.

In early summer this year, that sweet sun-loving fruit from the lands of vines and olives grew on a branch in Kent, part of the first-ever commercial harvest of apricots in the UK.

Sainsbury's has just marketed them in 250 stores. You think climate change isn't happening? The Sainsbury's apricots, with the Union flag on the punnets, say otherwise.

The harvest was a small but notable progress point in the shift that climate change is likely to bring to a world in which, among much else, fruits and plants from hotter climates are likely to flourish in British orchards and gardens.

Since 1900, the average UK temperature has risen by about 1C, and the growing season has lengthened by about a month.

Currently, the temperature is rising by between 0.15C and 0.2C per decade, but the rate itself will increase, and by the 2020s the climate will be nearly another degree warmer than the 1961-1990 average. By 2080, South-east England could become on average 5C (9F) warmer in summer, or as hot as Bordeaux.

Enter the apricots - forerunners, perhaps, of much more to come. Members of the rose family, and closely related to plums, peaches, cherries and almonds, apricots are not native to Britain but China.

They are believed to have been brought to the Mediterranean basin by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC and flourished in southern Europe and the Near East, and in regions with warm climates, such as California and Australia.

Their key characteristic is early ripening, so they require fairly high temperatures in spring and early summer. Although apricots have long been grown in Britain in a warm corner of a cottage garden or on a sheltered south-west-facing wall, they have never till now been cultivated on a commercial scale.

The 2005 harvest from Kent was substantial - about 1200kg from an apricot orchard of 1800 trees planted three years ago. Sainsbury's was surprised by the quality.

"They were much bigger than I would have expected," says the company's product technologist, Theresa Huxley. "The colour was superb, a beautiful dark orange with a beautiful sheen; I thought they'd be quite pale. They had a very rich, perfumed, aromatic apricot taste, quite stunning. I think they should be one of our premium brands."

Without the warmer seasons, the enterprise would not have stood a chance, she said.

"We know summers are getting warmer, and we thought it was worth trying," Huxley says.

Sainsbury's isn't stopping at apricots. It has a project, under wraps for the moment, to grow kiwifruit in Britain.

Kiwifruit flourishes in countries such as New Zealand and Italy, but Huxley's department is trialling a variety which they think will also grow well in Kent.

Not everything about growing new fruits in a warmer world will be plain sailing, warns Phil Hudson, chief horticultural adviser of the National Farmers' Union.

"Yes, we will have new produce, but we should not forget that climate change will bring risks as well as opportunities."

- INDEPENDENT