Tuesday 9 April 2013

Climate Change and its Impact on Agriculture


Climate change is probably the most important cliché in the world. To understand what climate change is, it is important to define climate as it is often an ambiguous term. Climate may be defined as a composite or general weather conditions that prevails over a long period of time in a particular geographical area. In simpler terms it is the average of everyday weather over a long period of time. Climate change refers to a lasting and significant change in the weather pattern and its distribution across the globe. Climate change is caused due to various factors such as accumulation of greenhouse gases like Carbon dioxide, water vapor, Methane, Nitrous oxide and Chlorofluorocarbons caused due to increase in the output of solar irradiance, volcanic eruptions and many human activities.
 
To substantially understand the effect climate change will have on agriculture we can begin with listing the possible changes in the environment that are likely to occur. Change in climate can be associated with change in temperature, precipitation, Carbon dioxide concentration, wind pattern and other climatic variables.

Temperature is critical variant in any biochemical process as it determines the rate of the reaction. The physiology of plants is ultimately a biochemical reaction and hence it is bound to effect the growth of the plants. An increase in temperature will lead to increase in the rate of respiration of the plant. An increase in the temperature is seen to decrease the grain-filling period which can lead to decreased yield. The effects of high temperature can be more significant around anthesis as the various stages of reproduction that the leads to the formation of seeds such as pollen grain synthesis, transfer of pollen grains to the stigma, generations of pollen tube, fertilization and development of zygote are all temperature sensitive. This could explain the decrease in yield. Also a higher mean temperature is shown to affect the root biomass of the crops which in turn affects the quality of crop as it reduces the ability to absorb nutrients from the soil. Though these effects may not be universal and many crops may be able to adapt to the changes in temperature, it cannot be neglected that some crops might be adversely affected even by the slight increase in the mean temperature. Studies conducted by enlarge show that the effect of increase in mean temperature leads to lower yield of crops.

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