Large potential for crop production adaptation depends on available future varieties

Florian Zabel*, Christoph Müller, Joshua Elliott, Sara Minoli, Jonas Jägermeyr, Julia M. Schneider, James A. Franke, Elisabeth Moyer, Marie Dury, Louis Francois, Christian Folberth, Wenfeng Liu, Thomas A.M. Pugh, Stefan Olin, Sam S. Rabin, Wolfram Mauser, Tobias Hank, Alex C. Ruane, Senthold Asseng

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Climate change affects global agricultural production and threatens food security. Faster phenological development of crops due to climate warming is one of the main drivers for potential future yield reductions. To counter the effect of faster maturity, adapted varieties would require more heat units to regain the previous growing period length. In this study, we investigate the effects of variety adaptation on global caloric production under four different future climate change scenarios for maize, rice, soybean, and wheat. Thereby, we empirically identify areas that could require new varieties and areas where variety adaptation could be achieved by shifting existing varieties into new regions. The study uses an ensemble of seven global gridded crop models and five CMIP6 climate models. We found that 39% (SSP5-8.5) of global cropland could require new crop varieties to avoid yield loss from climate change by the end of the century. At low levels of warming (SSP1-2.6), 85% of currently cultivated land can draw from existing varieties to shift within an agro-ecological zone for adaptation. The assumptions on available varieties for adaptation have major impacts on the effectiveness of variety adaptation, which could more than half in SSP5-8.5. The results highlight that region-specific breeding efforts are required to allow for a successful adaptation to climate change.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3870-3882
Number of pages13
JournalGlobal Change Biology
Volume27
Issue number16
Early online date17 May 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
F. Z. and J.M.S. acknowledge financial support from the BioSDG (grant no. 031B0788B) and the BioNex Project (grant no. 031B0230B) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. J.J was supported by the Open Philanthropy Project. S.S.R. acknowledges funding from the ISIpedia project (grant no. 01LS1711B) funded by the European Research Area for Climate Services. RDCEP is funded by NSF (grant no. SES‐1463644) through the Decision Making Under Uncertainty program. James A. Franke was supported by the NSF NRT program (grant no. DGE‐1735359) and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (grant no. DGE‐1746045). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Keywords

  • AgMIP
  • breeding
  • climate change
  • climate scenarios
  • CMIP6
  • crop traits
  • cultivar adaptation
  • food security
  • GGCMI
  • variety adaptation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Global and Planetary Change
  • Environmental Chemistry
  • Ecology
  • Environmental Science(all)

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