Evaluation of Carob Tree Productivity during a 30-Year Period, in Relation to Precipitation and Air Temperature
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Evaluation of Carob Tree Productivity during a 30-Year Period, in Relation to Precipitation and Air Temperature Pedro José Correia 1
& Tânia Cota
2
& Maribela Pestana
1
Received: 29 June 2020 / Accepted: 16 September 2020 / Published online: 30 September 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Water availability for irrigation of intensive crops will become a major problem
in southern Iberia. One of the tools to sustain land use under water shortage is to choose crops well adapted to those environmental stress conditions featuring low water demand. The aim of this paper is to explore several relationships between climatic variables and the fruit production of carob-tree (yield) in a series of 30 consecutive years (1985–2015) referred to one single orchard. Precipitation and air temperature were the selected variables and regression models were tested. It was not possible to find any relations between yield and temperature, but precipitation during the hydrological year was inversely and significantly related to yield (Model 1- R2 = 0.18). A close analysis indicated that rainfall registered during autumn was particularly effective, since higher yields were obtained in the years with less rainfall registered in the period September + October + November (SON) (Model 2; R2 = 0.21). Although the air temperature effect was not found significant, mean values between 22.0 and 24.5 °C during SON were crucial to flowering and yield. Model 2 was validated using an independent data set considering 3 years, and the calculated yields were overestimated by 18.6% and 4.0% in two consecutive seasons. Moreover, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios predict a precipitation decrease for SON period in the region, which may create favorable conditions for insect pollination and fruiting success. Highlights
& Precipitation and air temperature in a 30-year period are correlated with carob (a dry fruit) production in southern Portugal & Higher precipitation during September + October + November (SON) is related to lower yield & Climatic forecast using RCP scenarios indicates a decrease in precipitation during SON for the next decades which may lead to higher yield. Keywords Ceratonia siliqua . Climate change . Flowering . Autumn . Yield . Mediterranean
* Pedro José Correia [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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1 Introduction Mediterranean-climate regions are particularly vulnerable to climate change events, such as drought occurrence and increase in air temperature. In these regions, precipitation, which occurs mainly in winter, presents a very large inter- and intra-annual variation pattern. Most of the climatic models forecast a decrease in precipitation and increase in air temperature by the end of twenty-first century, thus, conditioning the options regarding the adoption of new cropping and farming systems (Del Pozo et al. 2019; Giorgi and Lionello 2008; Ouhamdouch and Bahir 2017; Ouhamdouch et al. 2020). Therefo
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