Climate change impacts vis-à-vis productivity of soybean in Vertisol of Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

The impact of climate change on agricultural crops is a major concern and threats to the global food security. It also limits the potential of crops and cropping system in a given area. Therefore, the present study was aimed to assess the combined effect of positive (CO2 fertilization, lesser temperature and higher rainfall) and negative (higher temperature, lower rainfall) impacts of the futuristic climatic scenarios on productivity of soybean using APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) model. We have followed the Climate-Crop Modeling Project (C3MP) methodology and generated ninety-nine sensitive test to achieve each test’s temperature, rainfall and CO2 concentration range. Using 30 years of climate data (1980-2010) of Central India as base, the simulation results showed that increasing CO2 concentrations alone resulted in increased soybean yield. Similarly, reduction in rainfall amount indicated negative impact on it. This effect further compounded with increase in temperature and thus, reduced soybean yield. Increasing the temperature with 10% decrease in rainfall declined the soybean yield by 10%. Whereas, increase in temperature along with increase in rainfall also not resulted favorably soybean growth. Decreasing the temperature from the base by 1oC and increasing the rainfall by more than 10% benefitted the soybean productivity, whereas increasing the temperature by 1oC with no change in rainfall resulted decline in soybean productivity by 10-15%.