Abstract
Crop models are highly useful for simulating crop and soil processes in response to variations in climate and crop management. However, well estimated crop genetic coefficients are required. So the purpose of this study is to calibrate and evaluate the performance of CERES-wheat model and to simulate the climate change impacts on phonological stages and grain yield of bread wheat (Tay and Senkegna varieties) in the study area. Observed climate data from National Meteorological Agency of Ethiopia from 1983 to 2015 and future climate from Climate Research Programme’s Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) database across 20 Global Circulation Models for Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP4.5 and 8.5) emission scenarios in the time horizon of early-term (2010-2039), mid-century (2040-2069) and end-century (2070-2100) were used. Crop and soil data were obtained from Adet Agricultural Research Center. Decision Support System for Agro-technology Transfer (DSSAT) crop model was employed. There was strong agreement between the simulated and observed values with R2 being 96, 79 and 79% for days to anthesis, grain yield and days to maturity, respectively for Tay wheat variety while 75% for days to anthesis, 92% for grain yield, and 75% for days to maturity of Senkegna bread wheat variety. On the other hand, during model validation, the goodness of fits (R2) was 86% for anthesis day, 70% for grain yield and 96% for physiological maturity days of Tay wheat variety. Similarly for Senkegna bread wheat variety, R2 was 89, 82 and 75% for anthesis day, grain yield, and physiological maturity days, respectively. The yield of both bread wheat varieties showed increase except in 2080s under RCP4.5 relative to the baseline. However, days to flowering and to maturity showed decreased in each time slice under both RCPs. Key words: Calibration, validation, crop model, wheat, Ethiopia, East Africa.
Highlights
Evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007a, b) is convincing that climate change is real
Climate change would adversely affect wheat crop production and cause certain wheat growing areas to be no longer viable, and wheat species will be restricted to higher altitude of Ethiopia (Yumbya et al, 2011)
Osman and Sauerborn (2002) and Hagos et al (2009) found the rainfall variability in Ethiopian leads to a 20% production deficit and increase in 25% poverty rate, which costs the economy over one-third of its growth potential
Summary
Evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007a, b) is convincing that climate change is real. Wheat is an important cereal crop grown in the highlands of Ethiopia (Schulthess et al, 1997). It has been among priority crops on research and development strategies in Amhara Region (ARARI, 2007). Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improved Project (AgMIP) protocol is a worldwide cooperative effort linking climate, crop and socio-economic modeling to produce improved modeling capacity for integrated assessment of climate change impacts on the agriculture sector at local, regional and global scale (Rosenzwig et al, 2013). Crop models are being used to evaluate the impact of climate change on crop production as a result of increased greenhouse gases (Rosenzweig et al, 1992; White et al, 2011). CERES-wheat is one of process oriented management level tool that has capacity to simulate the growth, development and yield of wheat under diverse environments in DSSAT model (Ritchie et al, 1998), which helps to enter data from field experiments, evaluate the models, estimate the generic coefficients of crop, conduct sensitivity analysis, analyze economic risk and uncertainty of alternative management options (Hoogenboom et al, 2010; Jones et al, 2003a)
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