Milder winters driven by climate change will hit blackcurrant crops, with plants producing fewer and lower quality fruit, according to a new study.

Like many other fruit and woody plants, blackcurrants need a period of chilling before they start to grow in spring. This reduces the risk of frost damage to new buds and makes sure they burst rapidly in the spring and flower together when there are plenty of pollinators such as bees around.

But researchers at the James Hutton Institute said warmer winters can cause the plants to flower later in the year, produce fewer fruit and, over a number of years, reduce the lifespan of the plant.

And they warned that although blackcurrants were particularly sensitive to changes, other fruit such as blueberries, cherries, apples and plums would be at risk as temperatures rose.

Katharine Preedy from Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland said: “Blackcurrants are like the canary in the mine. If we can understand what they need in a changing climate, we can apply our knowledge to similar crops like blueberries, cherries, apples and plums.”

Presenting preliminary findings at the British Ecological Society’s annual meeting in Birmingham, the researchers said understanding how different varieties of the fruit responded to temperatures was key.

The study found that a third of the UK blackcurrant crop, worth about £10m a year to the UK economy, requires 1,800 hours of chilling below 7C (45F), while others need far lower temperatures and some can tolerate warmer temperatures as long as the chilling period lasts longer.

Researchers found each blackcurrant variety preferred different levels of chilling, and that some were able to compensate for warmer winter temperatures if the period of cooling they experienced was longer, while others were not.

Preedy said understanding the genetics would help farmers select the best varieties to suit the local climate and conditions.

“In the future, we hope to identify genetic markers associated with the ability to withstand variable winters, so we can rapidly breed new varieties of blackcurrants,” she added.