The role of irrigation in changing wheat yields and heat sensitivity in India
Esha Zaveri () and
David Lobell ()
Additional contact information
Esha Zaveri: Stanford University
David Lobell: Stanford University
Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-7
Abstract:
Abstract Irrigation has been pivotal in wheat’s rise as a major crop in India and is likely to be increasingly important as an adaptation response to climate change. Here we use historical data across 40 years to quantify the contribution of irrigation to wheat yield increases and the extent to which irrigation reduces sensitivity to heat. We estimate that national yields in the 2000s are 13% higher than they would have been without irrigation trends since 1970. Moreover, irrigated wheat exhibits roughly one-quarter of the heat sensitivity estimated for fully rainfed conditions. However, yield gains from irrigation expansion have slowed in recent years and negative impacts of warming have continued to accrue despite lower heat sensitivity from the widespread expansion of irrigation. We conclude that as constraints on expanding irrigation become more binding, furthering yield gains in the face of additional warming is likely to present an increasingly difficult challenge.
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12183-9 Abstract (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-12183-9
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12183-9
Access Statistics for this article
Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie
More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().