Matches and mismatches between the global distribution of major food crops and climate suitability

Abstract

Over the course of history, humans have moved crops from their regions of origin to new locations across the world. The social, cultural and economic drivers of these movements have generated differences not only between current distributions of crops and their climatic origins, but also between crop distributions and climate suitability for their production. Although these mismatches are particularly important to inform agricultural strategies on climate change adaptation, they have, to date, not been quantified consistently at the global level. Here, we show that the relationships between the distributions of 12 major food crops and climate suitability for their yields display strong variation globally. After investigating the role of biophysical, socio-economic and historical factors, we report that high-income world regions display a better match between crop distribution and climate suitability. In addition, although crops are farmed predominantly in the same climatic range as their wild progenitors, climate suitability is not necessarily higher there, a pattern that reflects the legacy of domestication history on current crop distribution. Our results reveal how far the global distribution of major crops diverges from their climatic optima and call for greater consideration of the multiple dimensions of the crop socio-ecological niche in climate change adaptive strategies.

Soil biogeography at the habitats of origin of major crops

“…We should explore the functional properties of these soil microbes and how they modify plant evolutionary responses that ameliorate plant drought stress 17 . The application of the adapted soil microbiome is particularly urgent in low-income world regions where crops grow far from their climate optima and in areas expected to surpass aridity thresholds compromising functional and structural attributes of agroecosystems 42,43 . In contrast, the soil microbiome in tropical and temperate ecoregions exhibited greater abundances of Proteobacteria, Verrucomicrobiota, Acidobacteriota and Gemmatimonadota phyla, and other bacteria with predatory behaviour such as Myxococcota; terrestrial saprophytic fungi belonging to Mortierellomycota phylum; invertebrate parasitic protists such as Labyrinthulomycetes, Apicomplexa and kinetoplastids from the Euglenozoa phylum, along with recognized phototrophs such as Chlorophyta; as well as soil-dwelling invertebrates such as Nematodes and Arthropoda (Fig.…”

Evaluating the Topographic Factors for Land Suitability Mapping of Specialty Crops in Southern Ontario

“…However, the suitability of land for crop types is reliant on the presence locations identified, which are also influenced by factors outside of direct environmental conditions, namely anthropogenic influences. These factors include historical distributions, management practices such as resource input, crop rotation, and multiple cropping systems, and related land suitability between crop types [89,90]. On land that is suitable for multiple crop types, growers may prioritize more valuable crops and/or crops with less suitable land availability, impacting the extent of suitable land identified from presence/absence data.…”

“…On land that is suitable for multiple crop types, growers may prioritize more valuable crops and/or crops with less suitable land availability, impacting the extent of suitable land identified from presence/absence data. Land suitability, namely topography, may also not be considered extensively by growers, rather deciding on specialty crop locations based on climate conditions and other anthropogenic influences such as proximity to markets and production facilities [89]. These decisions could also exclude potential suitable topographic conditions from the current extent of specialty crops.…”

Climate resilience conserved in global germplasm repositories: Picking the most promising parents for agile plant breeding

“…These two challenges -one biological and the other social/regulatory/operational -set the broad context required to evaluate the adaptation potential of different countries' agricultural systems under climate change. This body of work explores a range of strategies associated with adapting food systems to climate change, both future biotic and abiotic threats [17][18]. Presently, academic and grey literature have focused primarily on the biological risk [19][20][21].…”