Land degradation and climate change: Global impact on wheat yields

Abstract

This study aims at estimating the wheat yield response to future challenges (land degradation and climate change) through a statistical emulator. Data from Global Agro-ecological Zones on the overall wheat yields of 254 provinces for nine main wheat-producing countries and corresponding climate and land suitability information were collected to estimate the statistical relationship between regressors and wheat yields. Once the statistical emulator was calibrated, three scenarios were developed to predict, separately and jointly, the impact of climate change and land degradation on wheat yields and productions in 2050 using the global climate model ECHAM4 information under the B2 scenario with the CO 2 fertilization effect. Results showed that under temperature and precipitation projections wheat yield would increase on average by 8% (first scenario); however, the impact of future land suitability (second scenario) on wheat yields would be negative, lowering the average yield (−5%), and overall wheat production (−14%). Combining both effects in the third scenario, future wheat yields would increase by 4.6%, while overall production will decrease by 5.5% since the harvest area will be reduced by 9.7%. Thus, land degradation more than climate change is likely to pose significant challenges for overall wheat production in the future.

Impact of Climate Change on Rice and Wheat Yield in Punjab State of India: A District-Level Analysis

“…Lastly, the coefficient of land is detrimental to wheat yield as it can be observed that with 1% change in the land would negatively impact the wheat yield by 0.164%. Various reasons may lead to such situations, and supporting the estimation of the current study as land degradation is offsetting more than climate change (Raimondo et al, 2021). Further, a positive relationship can be seen between ownership of land and rice yield in India (Koirala, 2014) and land inequality suppressing the farmers to use resources and affecting rice productivity adversely (Prasanna et al, 2009).…”

Mapping Global Crop Exposure to Extremely High Temperature

“…The crop yield risk was measured by multi-model ensemble (MME) simulation using global high spatial resolution (0.25°) climate forcing data. To enable such MME simulation, the development of emulators of global gridded crop models (GGCM) is required (Lobell and Burke 2010;Holzkämper et al 2012;Oyebamiji et al 2015;Raimondo et al 2020). The present results may provide crucial information for climate risk assessment and effective adaptations.…”

Effects of Low Temperature Stress on Source–Sink Organs in Wheat and Phosphorus Mitigation Strategies

“…Generally, the imbalanced source-sink relationship deteriorates the wheat yield and quality by reducing root absorption capacity, declining photosynthetic activity, poor spike differentiation, and delayed grain filling under LTS (Li et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2019;Kul et al, 2020). Soil degradation also greatly interferes with wheat productivity (Alewell et al, 2020;Raimondo et al, 2020). Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient for wheat growth and development, and about 40% agricultural lands are deficient in P worldwide (Lynch, 2011;Rafiullah et al, 2020).…”