152942 - The Impacts of Climate Change on the Irrigation Water Demand, Grain Yield, and Biomass Yield of Wheat Crop in Nepal.pdf (4.81 MB)
Impacts of climate change on irrigation water demand, grain yield, and biomass yield of winter wheat in Nepal
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 13:09 authored by Kaini, S, Matthew HarrisonMatthew Harrison, Gardner, T, Nepal, S, Sharma, AKThe Nepalese Sunsari Morang Irrigation district is the lifeblood of millions of people in the Koshi River basin. Despite its fundamental importance to food security, little is known about the impacts of climate change on future irrigation demand and grain yields in this region. Here, we examined the impacts of climate change on the irrigation demand and grain yield of wheat crop. Climate change was simulated using Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) of 4.5 and 8.5 for three time horizons (2016–2045, 2036–2065, and 2071–2100) in the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM). For the field data’s measured period (2018–2020), we showed that farmers applied only 25% of the irrigation water required to achieve the maximum potential grain yield. Actual yields were less than 50% of the potential yields. Projected irrigation water demand is likely to increase for RCP4.5 (3%) but likely to decrease under RCP8.5 (8%) due to the truncated crop duration and lower maturity biomass by the end of the 21st century. However, simulated yields declined by 20%, suggesting that even irrigation will not be enough to mitigate the severe and detrimental effects of climate change on crop production. While our results herald positive implications for irrigation demand in the region, the implications for regional food security may be dire
Funding
Meat and Livestock Australia
Integrity Ag & Environment
History
Publication title
WaterVolume
14Issue
17Article number
2728Number
2728Pagination
1-17ISSN
2073-4441Department/School
Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA)Publisher
MDPIPlace of publication
SwitzerlandRights statement
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Repository Status
- Open