Exploring climate change impacts and adaptation strategies in crop production by using process-based crop simulation models

Climate change threatens agriculture due to increased climate variability and more frequent occurrence of weather events such as extreme temperatures, heavy rainfall or prolonged drought, which may lead to reduced crop productivity.
Adapting to climate change is necessary to maintain or increase crop production in the future.
Process-based crop simulation models have been widely used in the past for cropping system and risk analysis.
They allow to explore crop responses to single factors of crop management and environment but also their interactions.
They are called process based, as they are a mathematical representation of major crop physiological processes including main soil-plant-atmosphere interactions.
They use input data such as crop characteristics, daily weather (solar radiation, temperature, rainfall, wind speed, relative humidity, etc.), soil physical and chemical characteristics, and management practices (sowing date, fertilizer, irrigation, etc.) to simulate crop development, growth and yield over time.
Crop models have been frequently used in field crops research to explore the effects of climate change (mainly changes in temperature, rainfall, atmospheric CO₂ and tropospheric ozone changes) on crop development, growth and yield.
Models also allow to explore possible adaptation strategies related to management practices (sowing dates, nutrient management, soil residues), potential genetic traits that can be beneficial (deeper roots, phenological changes, heat tolerance), as well as new area suitability for crop production.
They can be also applied to the field or plot scale but also at a larger scale over regions or globally.
Common approaches to simulate crop development and growth are discussed, as well as some examples of crop modelling applications to estimate climate change impacts and adaptation strategies.
Dynamic crop simulation models have the potential to analyze cropping system understanding to improve production practices for resilient production systems that can better stand the impacts of climate change in the future improving resource use.

International Symposium on Models for Plant Growth, Environments, Farm Management in Orchards and Protected Cultivation – HorchiModel2023

I.M. Hernández-Ochoa

agroecosystem model, cropping systems, environmental stress, soil-plant-atmosphere interactions, weather variations

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2025.1425.53