Can the cropping systems of the Nile basin be adapted to climate change?

Abstract

Climate change poses a fundamental threat to agriculture within the Nile basin due to the magnitude of projected impacts and low adaptive capacity. So far, climate change impacts on agriculture for the basin have mostly been assessed for single-cropping systems, which may bias the results considering that the basin is dominated by different cropping systems, with about one-third of the crop area under double cropping. In this study, we simulate single- and double-cropping systems in the Nile basin and assess the climate change impacts on different cropping systems under two scenarios, i.e. “no adaptation” and “adaptation to a late-maturing cultivar”. We find that the mean crop yields of maize, soybean and wheat decrease with future warming without cultivar adaptation. We attribute this to the shortening of the growing season due to increased temperature. The decrease is stronger in all single-cropping systems (12.6–45.5%) than in double-cropping systems (5.9–26.6%). The relative magnitude of yield reduction varies spatially with the greatest reduction in the northern part of the basin experiencing the strongest warming. In a scenario with cultivar adaptation, mean crop yields show a stronger increase in double-cropping systems (14.4–35.2%) than single-cropping systems (8.3–13.7%). In this scenario, farmers could possibly benefit from increasing cropping intensities while adapting to late-maturing cultivars. This study underscores the importance of accounting for multiple-cropping systems in agricultural assessments under climate change within the Nile basin.