Assessing Future Climate Change Impacts on Potato Yields — A Case Study for Prince Edward Island, Canada

Abstract

Crop yields are adversely affected by climate change; therefore, it is crucial to develop climate adaptation strategies to mitigate the impacts of increasing climate variability on the agriculture system to ensure food security. As one of the largest potato-producing provinces in Canada, Prince Edward Island (PEI) has recently experienced significant instability in potato production. PEI’s local farmers and stakeholders are extremely concerned about the prospects for the future of potato farming industries in the context of climate change. This study aims to use the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) potato model to simulate future potato yields under the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) climate scenarios (including SSP1–1.9, SSP1–2.6, SSP2–4.5, SSP3–7.0, and SSP5–8.5). The study evaluates the combined effects of changing climatic conditions at local scales (i.e., warming temperature and changing precipitation patterns) and increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere. The results indicate future significant declines in potato yield in PEI under the current farming practices. In particular, under the high-emission scenarios (e.g., SSP3–7.0 and SSP5–8.5), the potato yield in PEI would decline by 48% and 60% in the 2070s and by 63% and 80% by 2090s; even under the low-emission scenarios (i.e., SSP1–1.9 and SSP1–2.6), the potato yield in PEI would still decline by 6–10%. This implies that it is important to develop effective climate adaptation measures (e.g., adjusting farming practices and introducing supplemental irrigation plans) to ensure the long-term sustainability of potato production in PEI.

Evaluating the Yields of the Rainfed Potato Crop under Climate Change Scenarios Using the AquaCrop Model in the Peruvian Altiplano

“…Changes in rainfall and temperature modify the different phenological stages of the crop, affecting yields by reducing the number and size of potato tubers in rainfed crops [7,60,64,65]. Since the potato crop requires 400 mm to 800 mm of rain per agricultural campaign for adequate production [29], values slightly lower than this range were obtained in this research: 382 mm for RCP 4.5 and 390 mm for RCP 8.5, which generated a minimal reduction in crop yield under a rainfed agriculture system. Likewise, droughts represent a severe threat to agricultural development and food security [45] due to the deficit in precipitation and the increase in temperature, generating a tendency for production to decrease in the coming years, which would require the implementation of irrigation systems, resulting in higher water demand, according to [66].…”

“…The sowing date was 4 November 2017, and the harvest date was 2 April 2018, with a vegetative period of 151 days. Given that potato cultivation in the Peruvian Altiplano is mainly developed under the rainfed agriculture system, a single treatment for potato cultivation called rainfed potato crop (RPC) was determined, as was also carried out in previous research [22,28,29]. Sixteen canopy cover assessments were made during the growing season, with six replicates, obtaining 96 canopy cover data during the crop growing season.…”

Climate change impacts on global potato yields: a review

“…Potato varieties can also be classified according to the quality traits suited to a particular processing or cooking method, such as frying, baking, boiling, or dehydrating [31][32][33][34][35]. The preferred cultivars for frying are separated into French fry (elongate) or chipping (round) types (figure 2) [36]. However, the popularity of potato varieties differs by geographical region, and while some are common varieties globally, others are specific to certain areas [22,23].…”

“…However, the results are based on experimental soil, plant, weather, and management data and mostly a long-time accumulation of data; hence, collecting and gathering the required data takes a long time. The DSSAT model is an example of a CSM that uses soil, plant, weather, and management data to assess the impacts of climate change on potatoes [15,19,87,100,104,106,109,124,126,187]. Hijmans [86] estimated prospective potato yields with and without adaptation from 2010 to 2069 for 26 regions and countries.…”

“…Potatoes are prone to factors such as biotic, including nematodes, fungi, bacteria, pathogens, pests and diseases damages and abiotic including sunlight, drought, humidity, precipitation, frost, salinity and temperature changes and intense weather variation (figure 1) [13][14][15].…”