Development of management practices to address wheat vulnerability to climate change in North Delta

摘要

The effect of using improved agricultural management practices to reduce wheat yield losses under climate change was simulated using CropSyst simulation model.For this experiments were carried out on farmers' fields at El-Serw(Demiatte Governorate)in three growing seasons(2007/08,2008/09 and 2009/10).Three irrigation treatments were used,i.e.farmer irrigation practice(characterized by large applied irrigation amount),required irrigation amount and irrigation amount applied for raised bed cultivation.CropSyst model was calibrated using data of the 1st growing season then validated using the data of the next two growing seasons.Then,the model was used to simulate the vulnerability of wheat to climate change using two climate change scenarios(A2 and B2)developed by Hadley global climate change model.The results indicated that the highest wheat yield was produced under raised bed cultivation and the lowest under farmer irrigation practice.Furthermore,CropSyst model was able to predict wheat yield with high degree of accuracy for all treatments in both growing seasons.Farmer irrigation practice increased wheat vulnerability to climate change,where the average yield losses were 44-50％under A2 scenario and 41-46％under B2 scenario,averaged over the two seasons,with the lowest water productivity.Lower yield losses were obtained when wheat was irrigated with required amount of water.Raised bed irrigation resulted in even lower yield losses,with the highest water productivity,as a result of better growing environment for wheat plants.These results emphasis the importance of using improved agricultural management practices,which increased wheat yield under current climate condition and will be lowering yield losses under future climate change conditions.