Crop yields will fall within next decade due to climate change unless action is taken, says new study

CIAT via Wikimedia Commons

The research, led by the University of Leeds and published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, focusses on maize in Africa but the underlying processes affect crops across the tropics. Study lead author Professor Andy Challinor, from the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds, said: "In Africa, gradually rising temperatures and more droughts and heatwaves caused by climate change will have an impact on maize."We looked in particular at the effect of temperature on crop durations, which is the length of time between planting and harvesting."Higher temperatures mean shorter durations and hence less time to accumulate biomass and yield. "It takes anywhere between 10 and 30 years to breed a new crop variety and have it adopted by farmers.

The rate at which temperatures are increasing across the tropics means that by the time the crop is in the field it is being grown in warmer temperatures than it was developed in. By looking at a range of data on farming, regulatory policy, markets, and technologies, the researchers developed average, best and worst case scenarios for current crop breeding systems.

Read the full article on Agri Africa.