Agronomy, Volume 8, Issue 2
2018 February - 16 articles
Cover Story: Analyses of climate change impacts consistently show that cereal yields may decrease by as much as 10% by the middle of this century in West Africa. Yet, the news is not all bad. The results of crop yield simulation show that climate change effects on maize and sorghum yields are negative in the Northern Guinea Zone but generally positive in the Southern Guinea. Moreover, millet, another major staple crop, shows no change in yields under farmers’ current level of fertilization. Most encouragingly, for all crops and agroclimatic zones, simulated crop yields increased by 20%, 70%, and 180% when fertilizer application rates are raised from poor to moderate, near optimal, and optimum, even for worst case climate change scenario (i.e., RCP 8.5). Furthermore, changing cultivars, and planting dates results in significant positive yield change in all agro-ecological zones except for the Sahelian zone where the short growing season makes delayed planting an unviable adaptation option.
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