Drought effects on US maize and soybean production: spatiotemporal patterns and historical changes

Abstract

Maximizing agricultural production on existing cropland is one pillar of meeting future global food security needs. To close crop yield gaps, it is critical to understand how climate extremes such as drought impact yield. Here, we use gridded, daily meteorological data and county-level annual yield data to quantify meteorological drought sensitivity of US maize and soybean production from 1958 to 2007. Meteorological drought negatively affects crop yield over most US crop-producing areas, and yield is most sensitive to short-term (1-3 month) droughts during critical development periods from July to August. While meteorological drought is associated with 13% of overall yield variability, substantial spatial variability in drought effects and sensitivity exists, with central and southeastern US becoming increasingly sensitive to drought over time. Our study illustrates fine-scale spatiotemporal patterns of drought effects, highlighting where variability in crop production is most strongly associated with drought, and suggests that management strategies that buffer against short-term water stress may be most effective at sustaining long-term crop productivity.

Virus-induced down-regulation of GmERA1A and GmERA1B genes enhances the stomatal response to abscisic acid and drought resistance in soybean

“…Although drought is considered to be a major problem in soybean production worldwide [43–45], ERA1 homologs in soybean have not been reported to date. Therefore, we searched the Soybean Knowledge Base (SoyKB, http://soykb.org/) using BlastP program and the amino acid sequence of Arabidopsis ERA1 as query.…”

Field-scale mapping of evaporative stress indicators of crop yield: An application over Mead, NE, USA

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A High Resolution Dataset of Drought Indices for Spain

“…Gridded drought indices have been widely used in a variety of systems to identify drought impacts, including tree morbidity and mortality at various spatial scales [43,44], crop yield reductions and crop failures [45], forest fires [46,47], and decreased vegetation activity [48,49]. The developed …”