Assessing climate change impacts on crops by adopting a set of crop performance indicators

Abstract

The impact of climate change on the agricultural systems of three major islands in the Mediterranean basin, namely Sicily, Crete and Cyprus, was evaluated using a suite of specifically calibrated crop models and the outputs of a regional circulation model for Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 downscaled to 12 km of resolution and tested for its effectiveness in reproducing the local meteorological data. The most important annual (wheat, barley, tomato and potato) and perennial (grapevine and olive tree) crops were selected to represent the agricultural systems of the islands. The same modelling framework was used to test the effectiveness of autonomous adaptation options, such as shifting sowing date and the use of varieties with different growing season length. The results highlighted that, on average, warmer temperatures advanced both anthesis and maturity of the selected crops, but at different magnitudes depending on the crop and the island. Winter crops (barley, wheat and potato) experienced the lowest impact in terms of yield loss with respect to the baseline, with even some positive effects, especially in Sicily where both wheat and barley showed a general increase of 9% as compared to the baseline, while potato increased up to + 17%. Amongst perennial crops, olive tree showed low variation under RCP 4.5, but on average increased by 7% under RCP 8.5 on the three islands. Climate change had a detrimental effect specifically on tomato (− 2% on average in RCP 8.5 and 4.5 on the three islands) and grapevine (− 7%). The use of different sowing dates, or different varieties, revealed that for winter crops early autumn sowing is still the best option for producing wheat and barley in future periods on the three islands under both future scenarios. For tomato and potato, advancing sowing date to early winter is a winning strategy that may even increase final yield (+ 9% for tomato and + 17% for potato, on average). For grapevine, the use of late varieties, while suffering the most from increasing temperatures and reduced rainfall (− 15%, on average), is still a valuable option to keep high yield levels with respect to earlier varieties, which even if showing some increases with respect to the baseline have a generally much lower production level. The same may be applied to olive tree although the production differences between late and early varieties are less evident and climate change exerts a favourable influence (+ 4 and + 3% for early and late varieties, respectively).

Modeling the Impact of Future Climate Change Impacts on Rainfed Durum Wheat Production in Algeria

“…In addition, this early sowing allows the flowering stage to take place between the period from the end of February until the beginning of April, which allows the Mexicali cultivar's plant to avoid the high temperaturesin May and June. These results are compatible with those of [59], who also predicted the adaptation of wheat to early sowings in 2031-2060 climate conditions, under both RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios in the Mediterranean area. However, late sowing in mid-November and mid-December resulted in poor yields, as they led to the achievement of the durum wheat's flowering and grain-filling stages through the high-temperature period of the mid-April and early June period, which induce durum wheat's grain yield losses by scalding.…”

Adoption of Durum Wheat Cultivar ‘Salim’ with a Technical Package and Its Resilience to Climate Change Impacts in Smallholders: Case of Nebeur/Kef Region, Tunisia

“…In general, the main mechanisms controlling the simulated wheat responses are the direct and indirect temperature effects on the wheat's phenological development. It is well known that warmer temperatures accelerate the plant growing cycle through advanced anthesis and maturity, thus resulting in smaller biomass accumulation and lower yields [7,43]. Several reports have noted the detrimental impact of extreme weather events and climate change on wheat productivity in the Mediterranean and Asian countries [44][45][46].…”

“…This trend might be explained by the precocity of 'Karim' compared to 'Salim' (Table S2). Several authors pointed out that the use of wheat cultivars with a shorter growing cycle and early flowering can escape extreme climate events and thus result in a winning strategy for higher yields [7,52]. In contrast, Asseng et al [53] indicated that a prolonged vegetative growth may better compensate for the reduced growing season length induced by higher temperatures.…”

Use of Sentinel-2 Derived Vegetation Indices for Estimating fPAR in Olive Groves

“…Olive tree cultivation is one of the most important agricultural systems in Italy, extending over more than 1 million ha and mainly concentrated in the southern and central regions [1]. Despite its economic and environmental relevance, this cultivation is currently threatened by climate change [2][3][4][5] and hampered by the lack of modern agronomic management strategies, favoring the progressive abandonment of olive groves [6,7]. By contrast, the recovery of this cultivation over abandoned areas and an increase in the productive potential of marginal olive groves could enhance farmers' income and contribute to preserving and maintaining the rural landscape (CATChCO2-live project, 2017).…”