Seasonal prediction of crop yields and assessment of climate change impacts on crop productivity - WP3100

Partners involved: CIRAD (lead contractor), UREADMY, the Met Office, UREADAG

The aim of this work package is to develop methods of predicting crop yields on seasonal timescales, and of assessing the impacts of natural and anthropogenic climate change on crop productivity.

Some achievements so far:

• two versions of a conceptual crop model have been released in DELPHI programming language: one for cereals (sorghum and millet) and one for peanuts. The models accurately simulate crop growth, ground cover and yield under water and radiation limited conditions.

• Extensive experimental datasets for sorghum have been generated in collaboration with ICRISAT in Mali.

• the conceptual framework for a new model (HAPPY - Huge Area Potential Peanut Yields) has been developed follow this link for more details.

• the spatial and temporal variability of rainfall and peanut yield in India has been studied using EOF analysis. This has shown that on the subdivisional scale rainfall and peanut yield are well correlated on a subdivisional scale which means that crop models run at this scale can be reasonably driven by subdivisonal scale rainfall data

• future climate simulations including interactive vegetation have been analysed to examine the possible effects of vegetation feedbacks on tropical climates. The greatest impacts were found to be in the Amazon region where positive feedbacks between drying and vegetation die-back took place

Publications on this topic by PROMISE partners

Wheeler T.R., Chatzialioglou A., Craufurd P.Q., Ellis R.H. and Summerfield R.J. (1997). Dry matter partitioning in groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) exposed to high temperature stress. Crop Science, 37, 1507-1513. Abstract

Ferris R., Wheeler T.R., Ellis R.H. and Hadley P. (1998). High temperature stress at anthesis in field-grown crops of wheat. Grain yield and biomass. Annals of Botany, 82, 631-640. Abstract

Ferris R., Wheeler T.R., Ellis R.H. and Hadley P. (1999). Seed yield after environmental stress in soybean grown under elevated CO2. Crop Science, 39, 710-718. Abstract

Vara Prasad P.V., Craufurd P.Q., Summerfield R.J. and Wheeler T.R. (2000). Effect of short episodes of heat stress on flower production and fruit-set of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.). Journal of Experimental Botany, 51, 777-784. Abstract

Wheeler T.R., Craufurd P.Q., Ellis R.H., Porter J. R. and Vara Prasad P.V. (2000). Temperature variability and the yield of annual crops. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, in press.

Further information

see:
Work package description in the proposal
Detailed annual report (available to PROMISE partners or with the permission of the lead contractor)
18 month progress reports submitted by the partners for this work package

or:

contact Emily Black (emily@met.reading.ac.uk)