Climate adaptive rice planting strategies diverge across environmental gradients in the Indo-Gangetic Plains

Abstract

The timing of rice planting has a profound influence on the productivity of the rice-wheat cropping pattern in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP), a system that provides the foundation for food security in South Asia. Nevertheless, strategies for adaptive rice planting in a rapidly changing climate are not well established. In this ex-ante analysis, regional gridded crop model simulations are deployed to investigate the impact of different rice planting strategies on system level productivity, resilience, and environmental benefits. Our results suggest that synchronizing rice planting dates with the monsoon onset substantially outperforms farmer practice (+41%) and static state recommendations in the Eastern IGP. However, planting long-duration rice with the monsoon onset is ineffective in the Northwestern IGP since the later arrival of the monsoon increases the probability of cold damage to rice and terminal heat stress in wheat. Here, fixed planting dates (+12.5%) or planting medium duration varieties at monsoon onset (+18%) performed best. We conclude that resilient and productive rice planting strategies must account for interannual weather variability and divergent climate conditions across sub-regions in the IGP.

Assessing climate change risks associated with precipitation at unfavorable times in winter wheat using an improved crop calendar model incorporating vernalization and winter survival

“…As a result of the narrower sowing window, the windows of the other phenological events were also narrowed. Narrowing phenological windows might be particularly useful when one considers multiple crops are cultivated in a year, which plays a key role in gaining crop production under the climate change (Iizumi and Ramankutty 2015, Urfels et al 2022).…”

Potential Barriers to Adaptive Actions in Water–Rice Coupled Systems in Japan: A Framework for Predicting Soft Adaptation Limits

“…Shifting the transplantation date is relatively inexpensive and easier to implement than other adaptation measures. Therefore, it has been widely implemented in some countries (e.g., Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries [MAFF], 2006; Minoli et al., 2022; Urfels et al., 2021, 2022). Ishigooka et al.…”

“…Shifting the transplantation date is relatively inexpensive and easier to implement than other adaptation measures. Therefore, it has been widely implemented in some countries (e.g., Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries [MAFF], 2006;Minoli et al, 2022;Urfels et al, 2021Urfels et al, , 2022. Ishigooka et al (2017) used a process-based rice simulation model developed by Hasegawa and Horie (1997) to evaluate the effects of shifting the transplantation date throughout Japan on rice yield and quality.…”