Longer crop cycle lengths could offset the negative effects of climate change on Brazilian maize

Abstract

Maize (Zea mays) is considered one of the most important crops for world food security. Globally, Brazil is the second largest maize producer and the fourth largest maize consumer. The climate variables is one of the main determining factors for crop yield. Given the possibility of future climate changes, our objective was to evaluate the impact of climate change on maize crop growth and development, assessed strategies to cope with the future crop and to quantify the impacts on various producing regions of Brazil.The DSSAT/CERES-Maize model was calibrated with field data and then used to simulate current and six future climate scenarios, according to the AgMIP protocols. We selected three regional climate AGROMETEOROLOGY -Article circulation models (GCMs) and two representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for the period of 2040-2069. For most of the producing regions, the simulations showed a decreasing trend during both the summer and autumn sowing seasons, except the autumn crops in Southern Brazil. We found the air temperature rise as the main factor for yield decreasing, and this finding provides an adaptation option to cope with future climate, as the country has a great latitudinal range for crop management, meaning genotypes with extended cycles could compensate the climate change, and thereby avoid the yield loss for maize crops.

Crop-specific technology extrapolation domains for Brazil

“…Moreover, the Tukey's test showed that means differed from each other for most TAW classes within each selected CZ, this evidenced that the approach used for classifying CZ and TAW was able to adequately discriminate the environmental differences among different TEDs. Furthermore, the TED maps are also consistent with a well-validated simulation model that accounts for the effects of rainfall, temperature regime, and soil water availability on the crop physiology of sugarcane (Marin et al 2008;Marin and Carvalho 2012;Jones 2014, Vianna et al 2020), maize (Souza et al 2019), and soybean (Silva et al 2019 therefore considered that the crop-specific TED framework was able to capture the influence of soil type on yield within the same CZs in Brazil.…”

Climate change could reduce and spatially reconfigure cocoa cultivation in the Brazilian Amazon by 2050

“…The region comprises an area of 4 186 943 km 2 , which represents 49% of the national territory [ 18 ]. Rainfall in the Amazon has an annual seasonality that varies between 2.2 to 2.6 mm/day in the driest months (July and August) and reaches 9 mm/day in the rainiest months (February and March) [ 19 ].…”

Drought in Northeast Brazil: A review of agricultural and policy adaptation options for food security

“…This is evident in Brazilian maize production, due to shortening of the crop growing cycle and greater water deficit in future climate scenarios (Bender, 2017). Souza et al (2019) and Martins et al ( , 2019 estimated that yield losses of maize in NEB can vary from 30% to 60% for global warming scenarios of 2.0 and 4.0 • C, respectively. Marengo et al (2020) show that under a regional warming of 4 • C, the area under water stress condition in NEB would cover 49% and 54% of the region by 2070 and 2100, respectively.…”