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Use of agro-climatic zones to upscale simulated crop yield potential

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Title Use of agro-climatic zones to upscale simulated crop yield potential
 
Creator Wart, Justin van
Bussel, Lenny G. J. van
Wolf, Joost
Licker R
Grassini, Patricio
Nelson, A.
Boogaard, H.
Gerber J
Mueller ND
Claessens, Lieven
Ittersum, Martin K. van
Cassman, Kenneth G.
 
Subject climate
agriculture
crop yield
yield gap
food security
 
Description Yield gap analysis, which evaluates magnitude and variability of difference between crop yield potential (Yp) or water limited yield potential (Yw) and actual farm yields, provides a measure of untapped food production capacity. Reliable location-specific estimates of yield gaps, either derived from research plots or simulation models, are available only for a limited number of locations and crops due to cost and time required for field studies or for obtaining data on long-term weather, crop rotations and management practices, and soil properties. Given these constraints, we compare global agro-climatic zonation schemes for suitability to up-scale location-specific estimates of Yp and Yw, which are the basis for estimating yield gaps at regional, national, and global scales. Six global climate zonation schemes were evaluated for climatic homogeneity within delineated climate zones (CZs) and coverage of crop area. An efficient CZ scheme should strike an effective balance between zone size and number of zones required to cover a large portion of harvested area of major food crops. Climate heterogeneity was very large in CZ schemes with less than 100 zones. Of the other four schemes, the Global Yield Gap Atlas Extrapolation Domain (GYGA-ED) approach, based on a matrix of three categorical variables (growing degree days, aridity index, temperature seasonality) to delineate CZs for harvested area of all major food crops, achieved reasonable balance between number of CZs to cover 80% of global crop area and climate homogeneity within zones. While CZ schemes derived from two climate-related categorical variables require a similar number of zones to cover 80% of crop area, within-zone heterogeneity is substantially greater than for the GYGA-ED for most weather variables that are sensitive drivers of crop production. Some CZ schemes are crop-specific, which limits utility for up-scaling location-specific evaluation of yield gaps in regions with crop rotations rather than single crop species.
 
Date 2013
2014-12-16T06:37:35Z
2014-12-16T06:37:35Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Van Wart J, van Bussel LGJ, Wolf J, Licker R, Grassini P, Nelson A, Boogaard H, Gerber J, Mueller ND, Claessens L, van Ittersum MK, Cassman KG. 2013. Use of agro-climatic zones to upscale simulated crop yield potential. Field Crops Research 143:44-55.
0378-4290
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/52142
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2012.11.023
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0
Open Access
 
Source Field Crops Research