Scientists from the University of Minnesota are teaming up with a global team to study the complex effects of climate change on winter crops.
Warming winters may sound like a welcome change to some farmers, as the change in temperature could reduce freeze stress on plants and create more ideal conditions for growing winter crops and winter cover crops. However, when we look at climate change from a cross-seasonal perspective and taking into account decreasing snow cover, researchers find that the whole picture isn’t quite so sunny.
Less snow can lead to more exposure of winter crops to frost and may mean greater risks for agricultural drought.
In a new study published in Nature Climate change Zhenong Jin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Minnesota, led an international team investigating the implications that may be associated with warmer winters and decreasing snow cover, using winter wheat. (the largest winter crop in the US) as an example.
“While the implications of snow changes for agricultural irrigation are beginning to be understood, the implications for predominantly rain-fed winter crops such as winter wheat remain largely unknown. There may be risks of being too optimistic about growing winter crops under climate change,” Jin said.
Researchers used panel regression, a powerful statistical method to analyze repeated observations over time, to attribute annual winter wheat yield variability to multiple interactive environmental factors. These factors include cold degree days in the cold season, growth degree days, rainfall and snowfall during the growing season, and snow cover fraction during frozen days.
“Our study highlighted the potential freeze risk in winters with reduced snow cover, especially when seedlings were exposed to relatively warmer conditions that caused loss of hardiness, which can cause significant yield losses of winter crops,” said Peng Zhu, Ph.D. ., a researcher from the Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory at the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute, who co-led this study.
This research will help inform breeders as they consider the complex tradeoffs between warming, less snow, and occasional freeze threats when developing climate-smart cultivars.
These results also highlight the need to improve the representation of snow-related processes in crop models to better evaluate the effects of climate change and the adaptation potential in cropping systems.
“It’s worth noting that freeze stress is valued in some farming systems as it helps farmers control pests and diseases and even removes or at least compacts snow by farmers to increase soil freezing,” Jin said. “As data becomes available, future studies may also need to consider the impact of snow on pests and diseases to fully understand what future snow cover changes mean for the cropping system.”
Other members of the University of Minnesota research team include Taegon Kim and Chenxi Lin from the group of Jin and David Mulla from the Department of Soil, Water and Climate.
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