Adapting maize production to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Adapting maize production to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa Jill E. Cairns & Jon Hellin & Kai Sonder & José Luis Araus & John F. MacRobert & Christian Thierfelder & B. M. Prasanna
Received: 24 September 2012 / Accepted: 20 March 2013 / Published online: 24 April 2013 # The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Given the accumulating evidence of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, there is an urgent need to develop more climate resilient maize systems. Adaptation strategies to climate change in maize systems in subSaharan Africa are likely to include improved germplasm with tolerance to drought and heat stress and improved management practices. Adapting maize systems to future climates requires the ability to accurately predict future climate scenarios in order to determine agricultural responses to climate change and set priorities for adaptation strategies. Here we review the projected climate change scenarios for Africa’s maize growing regions using the outputs of 19 global climate models. By 2050, air temperatures are expected to increase throughout maize mega- environments within sub-Saharan Africa by an average of 2.1°C. Rainfall changes during the maize growing season varied with location. Given the time lag between the development of improved cultivars until the seed is in the hands of farmers and adoption of new management practices, there J. E. Cairns (*) : J. F. MacRobert : C. Thierfelder International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Harare, Zimbabwe e-mail: [email protected] J. Hellin : K. Sonder International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico, D.F., Mexico J. L. Araus Departament de Biologia Vegetal, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain B. M. Prasanna International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Nairobi, Kenya
is an urgent need to prioritise research strategies on climate change resilient germplasm development to offset the predicted yield declines. Keywords Maize . Climate change . Heat stress . Drought stress . Sub-Saharan Africa . Germplasm improvement . Conservation agriculture . Seed delivery systems
Introduction Over the next 50 years agriculture must provide for an additional 3.5 billion people (Borlaug 2007). Production of the three major cereal crops alone (maize, wheat and rice) will need to increase by 70 % by 2050 in order to feed the world’s growing rural and urban populations. However, climate change scenarios show that agricultural production will largely be negatively affected and will impede the ability of many regions to achieve the necessary gains for future food security (Lobell et al. 2008). The impact of climate change on agricultural production will be greatest in the tropics and subtropics, with sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) particularly vulnerable due to the range of projected impacts, multiple stresses and low adaptive capacity (IPCC 2007). Climate change scenarios for SSA include an increase in seasonal and extreme temperature events and intensity of droug
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