Description of Meteorological Indices Presented Based on Long-Term Yields of Winter Wheat in Southern Germany

Kurt Heil (), Christian Klöpfer, Kurt-Jürgen Hülsbergen and Urs Schmidhalter
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Kurt Heil: School of Life Sciences, Forschungsdepartment Life Science Systems, Chair of Plant Nutrition, Technical University of Munich, Emil-Ramann-Str. 2, D-85350 Freising, Germany
Christian Klöpfer: School of Life Sciences, Forschungsdepartment Life Science Systems, Chair of Organic Agriculture and Agronomy, Technical University Munich, Liesel-Beckmann-Str. 2, D-85354 Freising, Germany
Kurt-Jürgen Hülsbergen: School of Life Sciences, Forschungsdepartment Life Science Systems, Chair of Organic Agriculture and Agronomy, Technical University Munich, Liesel-Beckmann-Str. 2, D-85354 Freising, Germany
Urs Schmidhalter: School of Life Sciences, Forschungsdepartment Life Science Systems, Chair of Plant Nutrition, Technical University of Munich, Emil-Ramann-Str. 2, D-85350 Freising, Germany

Agriculture, 2023, vol. 13, issue 10, 1-21

Abstract: This study had three main objectives. First, weather indices were listed and their derivations were described to show which weather parameters could be used to describe the influence on agricultural yields. Second, farmers and agricultural scientists should be given the opportunity to evaluate the weather of the observation years in the study region. Furthermore, significant fluctuations in winter wheat yields were compared with weather events. As weather variables, 45 meteorological indices were used, such as precipitation-, temperature-, precipitation-temperature-, growing-period-, and radiation-related indices. In the case of winter wheat, heat waves and dry periods were the most important factors that affected the yields. For the past 20 years, in particular, there have been recurrent spring and summer months with low precipitation and, in some cases, significantly too warm periods, such as in 2003 and 2018 (April to October 2003: +16% °C, 2018: +27% °C, 2003: −38% mm, 2018: −12% mm in relation to 1978 to 2020), which were associated with particularly high yield losses. The qualitative assessments illustrate that in the observation period, years with reduced yield compared with the multiannual trend were frequently well explainable by extreme weather events.

Keywords: climate indices; crop production; long-term yield; plant growth; fertile site; weather anomaly (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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