CYCAS-MED project: Crop yield and climate change impacts: adaptation strategies to desertification processes in Mediterranean areas

The International cooperation project CYCAS-MED (Crop Yield and Climate change impacts: Adaptation Strategies to desertification processes in MEDiterranean areas) is based on the application of a set of integrated methodological strategies aimed to (i) develop tools and methodologies for assessing climate change impact on Mediterranean regions and evaluating the specific impact on agricultural areas threatened by desertification, and (ii) identify the most appropriate socio-economic sustainable adaptation strategies to cope with the negative effects of climatic changes.

CYCAS-MED is carried out in cooperation with the “Laboratoire d'Agrométéorologie et Systèmes d'Informations Géographiques, Centre Régional de la Recherche Agronomique, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, INRA–CRRA”, located in Settat, Morocco. Research activities will be devoted to: 1) Describe the climatology of the study area and quantify possible climate trends; 2) Develop an Agro-climatic Classification System at national and local scale for agricultural areas, with particular attention to the Chaouia Ouardigha province (Northwestern Morocco); 3) Analyze relationships between the variability of observed weather and the variability of observed cereal productions with the aim to quantify the impacts of climate change and desertification on food cereals productions at local scale; 4) Provide breeding guidelines for yield potential and adaptation to future drought conditions in cereals, with a specific focus on soft and durum wheat varieties; 5) Evaluating the economic impacts of adaptation strategies to climate change at local and farm-level scales using different tools and climate scenarios.

In this work, we present preliminary results from activities 1) and 3). The climatological study included the analysis of long term time series of daily meteorological data. In this context, methods used to gap-fill missing data were a crucial topic. After gap-filling, we calculated annual values of bio-climatic indexes, their inter-annual variability and the degree of correlation with cereal productions. Possible trends were also determined using the Mann-Kendall test. In addition, the Agro-Ecological Zoning (AEZ) methodology, developed by FAO e IIASA (1999), was applied to produce a classification of cereals production areas of Morocco based on potential yield. A crucial part of the analysis was dedicated to the gap filling data.

Preliminary results showed significant positive increasing trends relative to daily temperature and percentage of warm nights. No significant trends were obtained for rainfall. A multivariate regression analysis between crop yields and a sub-set of bio-climatic indexes was performed and significant results were obtained.

In relation to activity 3), a Weather-Yield Function (WYF) was calculated using a statistical approach to quantify how much the inter-annual meteorological variability explains the inter-annual variability of crop yields.

The future activities planned include the application of WYF to evaluate the impacts of future climate change scenarios on crop production in Morocco, and provide useful information for developing and implementing adaptation strategies at national, local and farm level.