Abstract
Extreme weather events and pest outbreaks decrease rice yields and increase their variability, presenting challenges for the agricultural agenda to increase rice productivity and yield stability in Asia. The integration of azolla, fish and ducks has been shown to create robust systems that maintain high yields under heavy rainfall, but no clear evidence exists that rice yields in these systems are stable across locations and throughout time under divergent weather conditions. We show that the introduction of additional elements into the rice cropping system enhanced the adaptive capacity to extreme weather events across four locations and three cropping cycles. The complex system showed both static and dynamic stability, and had the highest reliability index, thereby outperforming the conventional and organic monoculture systems. The complex rice system design provides a promising example for resilience towards the impacts of climate change on rice production and for safeguarding food security in Asia and beyond.
Highlights
Climate change is expected to increase the variability in weather conditions and the frequency of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts[1,2], which will have direct effects on agricultural production worldwide[3]
Domestic rice production and food security in Indonesia have recently been affected by extreme weather events that include heavy rainfall in 2013 and in 2016 caused by la Nina, which were interrupted by an el Nino event that prolonged the dry season during 2015
Organic agriculture has been proposed as an option to reduce the negative impacts on the environment and human health, but it is often associated with lower crop yields and more labour-intensive crop management practices, this is dependent on the type of organic system[15,16,17]
Summary
Climate change is expected to increase the variability in weather conditions and the frequency of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts[1,2], which will have direct effects on agricultural production worldwide[3]. In Asian rice systems, the anticipated changes in weather patterns could lead to faster development, growth, and spread of weeds and of important crop pests and diseases, presenting a major challenge to food stocks[4,5,6,7]. This is of great relevance to Indonesia: it is the third largest rice producer in the world, demand for rice exceeds production[8,9], resulting in an insecure national stockpile that remains dependent on imports. Conventional treatments were characterised by the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, while organic treatments received organic fertilizers and www.nature.com/scientificreports/
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