Assessment of climate change impact on maize yield and yield attributes under different climate change scenarios in eastern India

Abstract

Global climate change can harm the food production globally by varying intensity and frequency of rainfall, occurrence of extreme weather and increment in greenhouse gases. Increased occurrence of extreme climate events results in greater variability of agricultural production. In this study, the climate change impact evaluation was done by using CERES-maize model for maize yield and yield attributes for the projected time periods 2021–2050, and 2051–2080 by using different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5 W/m2 respectively for eastern India, and the projected results were compared with the baseline scenario of 1982–2012. On comparison with the baseline (1982–2012) results, the change in yield recorded was −10.58%, −14.80%, −21.02%, and −23.39% respectively for the time slice 2021–2050, and −15.20%, −18.54%, −24.75%, and −26.83% respectively for the time slice 2051–2080 for irrigated condition. But, in rainfed condition, the change in yield recorded was higher of 10.55%, 9.20%, 8.13%, and 7.47% respectively with the time slice 2021–2050, while 10.63%, 6.65%, 7.47%, and 4.31% for the time slice 2051–2080. Study indicates the loss of grain yield is more for time period of 2051–2080 rather than the time period 2021–2050 under irrigated condition in comparison to the baseline yield, while in rainfed condition, the grain yield increased in both the time periods 2021–2050, and 2051–2080 which indicates that the increase in rainfall reduced the negative impact of temperature on the crop yield.

Keywords

• Climate change
• Representative concentration pathways
• Extreme weather