The risk of experiencing a summer such as the one we have just been through will increase in the years to come due to climate change.
The researchers found that wheat and maize under climate change will be most affected by drought and less so by heat stress.
– By understanding whether heat or drought poses the greatest risk to the individual types of crops, farmers and plant breeders can more readily develop and select the crop varieties and management systems that are most suitable, says one of the authors of the article, Section Manager and Professor Jørgen E. Olesen from the Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University.
The researchers used an ensemble of 10 different models to calculate how much heat or drought, respectively, contributes to yield losses in winter wheat and maize.
Thereafter, the researchers used the models to predict wheat and maize yields up to 2050.
Maize in particular will be under pressure If agriculture continues to use the current varieties and current cropping systems, climate change on a whole will lead to yield losses in maize and increasing yields in wheat.
Heat stress will, on average for all of Europe, not pose a problem for crops if there is sufficient rainfall, while drought stress will pose a problem for maize, in particular.
In years with low yields, drought will be a problem for both maize and wheat and there will be no help to find from increased levels of CO2 — which would otherwise benefit yields in the absence of drought.
Journal Reference: Heidi Webber, Frank Ewert, Jørgen E. Olesen, Christoph Müller, Stefan Fronzek, Alex C. Ruane, Maryse Bourgault, Pierre Martre, Behnam Ababaei, Marco Bindi, Roberto Ferrise, Robert Finger, Nándor Fodor, Clara Gabaldón-Leal, Thomas Gaiser, Mohamed Jabloun, Kurt-Christian Kersebaum, Jon I. Lizaso, Ignacio J. Lorite, Loic Manceau, Marco Moriondo, Claas Nendel, Alfredo Rodríguez, Margarita Ruiz-Ramos, Mikhail A. Semenov, Stefan Siebert, Tommaso Stella, Pierre Stratonovitch, Giacomo Trombi, Daniel Wallach.
Diverging importance of drought stress for maize and winter wheat in Europe.