Abstract
The present study assessed the effect of projected climate change on the sowing time, onset, and duration of flowering, the duration of the growing season, and the grain yield of spring barley in Northern Serbia. An AquaCrop simulation covered two climate model integration periods (2001–2030 and 2071–2100) using a dual-step approach (with and without irrigation). After considering the effect of climate change on barley production, the economic benefit of future supplemental irrigation was assessed. The model was calibrated and validated using observed field data (2006–2014), and the simulation’s outcomes for future scenarios were compared to those of the baseline period (1971–2000) that was used for the expected climate analysis. The results showed that the projected features of barley production for the 2001–2030 period did not differ much from current practice in this region. On the contrary, for the 2071–2100 period, barley was expected to be sown earlier, to prolong its vegetation, and to shorten flowering’s duration. Nevertheless, its yield was expected to remain stable. An economic feasibility assessment of irrigation in the future indicated a negative income, which is why spring barley will most likely remain rain-fed under future conditions.
Highlights
Global climate change will provoke changes in the agro-ecosystems of Europe in the coming decades [1]
By the use of the observed crop data (Tables 3 and 4), AquaCrop was calibrated for spring barley under rain-fed conditions
The correlation coefficient between the observed and calculated yield that was used for the model’s validation (Table 5) was 0.88. This result was strongly affected by data that were obtained in 2014, in which the simulated yield was 14% higher than observed yield due to heavy rain during May 2014 and the fact that crop models commonly are not able to reproduce the full extent of the impact of extreme weather events
Summary
Global climate change will provoke changes in the agro-ecosystems of Europe in the coming decades [1]. The results from many general circulation models (GCMs) suggest that countries in southeastern Europe, including Serbia, will suffer significant climate change impacts at different spatial and temporal scales in the future [2]. There are many studies that have confirmed and described climate change in Serbia and its regions through dynamic and statistical downscaling and investigating climate change’s effect on crop yield [4]. Much effort has been put forth to assess climate change’s effect on agriculture on a global scale [5,6]. Much more attention is devoted to the impact of climate change on individual regions [7]
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