Quantifying the sensitivity of maize production to long-term trends in fertilization and regional climate in China

作者：Na Huang, Ju Liang, Fei Lun, Kang Jiang, Buju Long, Xiao Chen, Riping Gao, Yi Zhou, Jingyu Men, Pengshuai Bi, Zhihua Pan · 发表于：Journal of Agriculture and Food Research · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1016/j.jafr.2024.101015 · 被引用次数：13 · 研究领域：Crop Yield and Soil Fertility、Climate change impacts on agriculture、Rice Cultivation and Yield Improvement

The regional climate over China has changed pronouncedly since the mid-20th, posing substantial risks and uncertainties to local crop production. The maize production has demonstrated considerable sensitivity to such changes. Observations in recent years witnessed that the use of fertilizer has been a crucial contributor to the increase in yields of global staple crops including maize. Thus, adjusting fertilizer use is a potential measure to offset the negative impacts of climate change on staple crops, while quantifying the pros and cons of such a measure for maize production has not been sufficiently performed. Based on multiple sources of observational records and statistical yield simulations, this study assesses the impacts of historical trends of regional climate and fertilizer use on maize yield over the main cultivation regions in China for the period 1981 to 2020. The results show that 1 °C of warming has resulted in pronounced changes in the general maize yield (−5.5 ± 0.5 %–21.1 ± 1.1 %, mean ± error standard). In comparison, a 10 % increase in fertilizer use has resulted in boosted yield by 2.4 ± 0.2 %–4.3 ± 0.2 %. For the mitigation effects of fertilizer, a 10 % increase in fertilizer use can offset 2–3 % of yield reductions associated with the changes in both temperature and precipitation. During the climate change period, the contribution of temperature and precipitation trends shifted from yield loss (by −8.1 ± 1.5 %) to yield gain (by 5.1 ± 2 %) from north to...