[font face=Serif][font size=5]Farming adaptations to combat climate change impact crop yields in 2050[/font]

Published September 6, 2016
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• Sorghum is a staple food crop in West African countries whose crop yields already suffer from long droughts and unpredictable rainfall.
• Using heat-tolerant varieties of sorghum as a new management practice shows the most potential as an adaptation for maintaining crop yield as global warming raises the temperatures in West Africa.
• This study’s unique framework compares how West African sorghum crop yields will fare in the higher temperatures and higher CO2 of the future—if specific farming management practices or technologies are adopted and if they are not adopted.

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A summary of the findings show:

• Late sowing, or choosing a safer time to plant, did not show much benefit.
• Increasing seed density and using more fertilizer results in higher crop yield, with or without climate change.
• Changing the length of thermal time required for sorghum to grow results in a reduction in crop yield.
• Collecting rainfall to use during a dry spell will only marginally benefit crop yield with or without climate change.
• Using sorghum varieties that are more resilient to heat stress during the flowering period proves to have the most potential for greater crop yield with higher temperatures in the future.

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