Improving African bean productivity in a changing global environment
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Improving African bean productivity in a changing global environment Gebel Taba-Morales, et al. [full author details at the end of the article] Received: 4 September 2019 / Accepted: 26 December 2019/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) cultivation delivers income to farmers and nutrition to consumers in sub-Saharan Africa. With a growing population and land scarcity, there will be greater pressure to intensify common bean and other crops in the region. However, high temperatures and increased drought may reduce common bean yields in Africa. Climate change impacts on climbing beans are not yet clear. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the expected impact of climate change on suitability for climbing bean cultivation. The study identifies areas suitable to cultivate climbing beans in sub-Saharan Africa, taking into account the present climate as well as the predicted future climate. The analysis compares and evaluates the performance of two ecological niche models—Ecocrop and MaxEnt—under future climatic conditions, according to global circulation models of the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The Ecocrop model results showed a wide common bean distribution in comparison with those of MaxEnt, which showed a better approximation to the current distribution of climbing beans. The MaxEnt model performed well as judged by validation statistics and comparison with climbing bean production data. Overall, the models project climate change to decrease the suitability of climbing beans in Africa. The results suggest that rising temperatures and variable rainfall will most severely affect bean production in countries of southern Africa such as Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Mozambique. In other parts of the tropics, climbing bean cultivation may suffer rising temperatures and more variable rainfall at higher latitudes, as opposed to areas near the equator. The study suggests where agricultural specialists can promote climbing beans in Africa and other regions of the world, where they are highly suitable and not yet widely cultivated. Researchers can improve studies such as this one for beans and other crops by developing more detailed calibration and validation data sets for modeling efforts. Keywords Climbing beans . Species distribution models . MaxEnt . Ecocrop . Climate change . Spatial analysis . Geographic distribution
1 Introduction Many agricultural and development experts consider common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) as an important source of nutrition, especially when access to animal-based proteins is limited by
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
low purchasing power. While common bean was considered the “beef of the poor” in the past, specialists now perceive it as both a nutritious food crop and a cash crop across sub-Saharan Africa (Buruchara et al. 2011). Farmers cultivate 7.7 million ha of common bean in subSaharan Africa (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2019a, b, c). Bean consumption
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