Abstract
Climate change is a major environmental stressor that would adversely affect tropical agriculture, which is largely rain-fed. Associated with climate change is an increasing trend in temperature and decline in rainfall, leading to prolonged and repeated droughts. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of climate variables such as temperature, relative humidity, vapor pressure deficit (VPD), and soil water on the phenology, biomass, and grain yield of soybean crops. A greenhouse experiment was set in a split plot design with three average environmental conditions as the main plots: E1 (36 °C, RH = 55%), E2 (34 °C, RH = 57%) and E3 (33 °C, RH = 44%). Additionally, there were three water treatments: W1 (near saturation), W2 (Field capacity), and W3 (soil water deficit) and two soybean varieties (Afayak and Jenguma). These treatments were replicated nine times. The results showed that high temperatures (E1) accelerated the crop development, particularly at flowering. Additionally, increased atmospheric demand for water under a high temperature environment resulted in high evapotranspiration, leading to high transpiration which probably reduced photosynthetic activity of the plants and thereby contributing to biomass and grain yield loss. Biomass and yield were drastically reduced for the combined effect of high temperature (E1) and drought (W3) as compared to combined effect of ambient temperature (E3) and well-watered condition (W1). Increasing temperatures and erratic rainfall distributions associated with climate change poses a potential threat to the soybean production in Ghana.
Highlights
Changes in weather components are largely responsible for the frequent yield variability and gaps that have been recorded in the literature, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) [1,2]
Temperature variations during the growth period showed that the daily average temperature range for E1 was from 29.7 to 41 ◦ C, (Figure 1a) but the mean was 36 ◦ C, giving a variability (CV) = of 7%
This study provides information on the response of soybean growth and yield under potential future changes in temperature and soil moisture conditions
Summary
Changes in weather components are largely responsible for the frequent yield variability and gaps that have been recorded in the literature, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) [1,2]. An analysis of weather patterns between 1960 and 2000 in Ghana indicated a general temperature rise of about 1 ◦ C over the whole country [4]. Associated with this is a decline in rainfall, which generally decreases from south to north [2]. Projections show that these trends will continue at least into the near future [1,5]. These developments spell adverse conditions for rain-fed agriculture, especially due to the inherently low productivity of the soils. Though soils of the middle belt are inherently deeper, they are degrading at very fast rates
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