Harnessing adaptation has increased French apple yields but heat stress mitigation will become essential by 2050

Evidence on how climate change affects perennial fruit crops remains limited. Here, focusing on historical apple production in France from 1989 to 2020, we find that most regions adapted to harness warming-related benefits, especially in the apple blooming period. However, in hotter Mediterranean departments, adaptations to mitigate yield losses were crucial to avoiding greater losses. Although historical effects were mostly positive due to 'harnessing adaptation', temperatures will increasingly exceed optimal thresholds, increasing the number of regions experiencing net losses by 2050 unless heat stress mitigation improves.