Abstract
Understanding the role of climatic factors on crop yields is essential in predicting the future impact of climate change. In order to understand the influence of climatic factors on OSR, detailed farm-level panel data from 2566 farms across 67 counties of the 6 major OSR production regions in China, from the surveys conducted by the national OSR industry project between 2008 and 2013, were used to examine the contribution of changes in selected climatic variables between 2008 and 2013 to yield variation. Spatial and temporal patterns of the relationships between OSR yield, climatic factors were estimated together with the effects of farmer adaptation and management practices on yield variability. The analysis revealed that yields in the low-latitude production regions were more sensitive to temperature increases and likely to decline. Precipitation iwas the most influential factor on yield at the first two growth stages; temperature and sunshine hours were most important at the third and fourth growth stages, respectively. Labour input was the most influential management factor affecting yields compared with fertilizer and other inputs. The study concludes that projection of future climate change impacts will need inter alia to incorporate more sophisticated and detailed measures of climatic variables than simple means of temperature and precipitation, incorporating timing in relation to plant growth and yield.
Highlights
Past and projected future climate change impacts on crop yields have received a great deal of attention by the international scientific community
The estimated coefficients of climatic variables and physical variables are interpreted as elasticities
As the demand for OSR products such as rapeseed oil and cake has been increasing globally and in China, it is essential to understand the susceptibility of production in China to changes in climate
Summary
Past and projected future climate change impacts on crop yields have received a great deal of attention by the international scientific community. The correlation between yield and specific climatic variables differ spatially for different crops. Lobell et al [6] estimated that over the period 1980–2008, global temperature and precipitation trend impacts accounted for a 3.8% decrease in maize yields, a 0.1% decrease in rice yields, a 5.5% decrease in wheat yields and a 1.7% decrease in soybean yield. The impact of climate change on crop yield exhibits wide variation. Climate impacts accounted for a large part of yield gains for maize in China and wheat in Russia, Turkey, and Mexico (Easterling et al [7]). Rice yields in China have been found to be positively related with temperature in some regions and negatively related in others (Zhang et al [8,9]). According to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC (IPCC [10]), crop yields in low-latitude regions are more likely to decrease under even slight warming
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