Climate change impacts on crop productivity in Africa and South Asia

By J. Knox, T. Hess, A. Daccache, Tim Wheeler. 2012

754 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Climate change is a serious threat to crop productivity in regions that are already food insecure. We assessed the projected impacts of climate change on the yield of eight major crops in Africa and South Asia using a systematic review and meta-analysis of data in 52 original publications from an initial screen of 1144 studies. Here we show that the projected mean change in yield of all crops is − 8% by the 2050s in both regions. Across Africa, mean yield changes of − 17% (wheat), − 5% (maize), − 15% (sorghum) and − 10% (millet) and across South Asia of − 16% (maize) and − 11% (sorghum) were estimated. No mean change in yield was detected for rice. The limited number of studies identified for cassava, sugarcane and yams precluded any opportunity to conduct a meta-analysis for these crops. Variation about the projected mean yield change for all crops was smaller in studies that used an ensemble of > 3 climate (GCM) models. Conversely, complex simulation studies that used biophysical crop models showed the greatest variation in mean yield changes. Evidence of crop yield impact in Africa and South Asia is robust for wheat, maize, sorghum and millet, and either inconclusive, absent or contradictory for rice, cassava and sugarcane.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1aa42f730a779e7e18a12852674f61c09405d41d

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Citations in the corpus

Water and energy footprint of irrigated agriculture in the Mediterranean region (2014, background): “A changing climate with rising temperatures and shifts in the spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall is likely to impact on crop productivity and food security (Knox et al 2012).”
Climatic impacts across agricultural crop yield distributions: An application of quantile regression on rice crops in Andhra Pradesh, India (2013, background): “Although each of these results may be sensitive to specific thresholds of phenology and photosynthesis as well as the climatic scenarios used in these models, they present some plausible evidence that climatic impacts on agriculture could be heterogeneous and ambiguous (Knox et al., 2012).”
Implications of regional improvement in global climate models for agricultural impact research (2013, background): “their vulnerability to climate change [1, 2, 4].”
Climate Change Impacts on Water and Agriculture Sectors in Southern Africa: Threats and Opportunities for Sustainable Development (2020, background): “Empirical evidence indicates that agriculture food systems and communities vulnerable to extreme weather changes are expected to be more vulnerable in future climate change shocks [8,15,19,43].”
The impact of climate extremes and irrigation on US crop yields (2015, background): “Regional studies indicate a projected decrease in the mean yield of eight major crops grown in Africa and South Asia by 2050 (Knox et al 2012).”
Assessing climate change impacts on sorghum and millet yields in the Sudanian and Sahelian savannas of West Africa (2013, background): “More recently, Knox et al (2012) estimate that mean yield change for all crops is −8% by the 2050s with strong variations among crops and regions.”