Abstract: Global warming is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of severe water scarcity (SWS) events, which negatively affect rain-fed crops such as wheat, a key source of calories and protein for humans. Here, we develop a method to simultaneously quantify SWS over the world’s entire wheat-growing area and calculate the probabilities of multiple/sequential SWS events for baseline and future climates. Our projections show that, without climate change mitigation (representative concentration pathway 8.5), up to 60% of the current wheat-growing area will face simultaneous SWS events by the end of this century, compared to 15% today. Climate change stabilization in line with the Paris Agreement would substantially reduce the negative effects, but they would still double between 2041 and 2070 compared to current conditions. Future assessments of production shocks in food security should explicitly include the risk of severe, prolonged, and near- simultaneous droughts across key world wheat-producing areas.

Abstract: The phenological development of cereal crops from emergence through flowering to maturity is largely controlled by temperature, but also affected by day length and potential physiological stresses. Responses may vary between species and varieties. Climate change will affect the timing of cereal crop development, but exact changes will also depend on changes in varieties as affected by plant breeding and variety choices. This study aimed to assess changes in timing of major phenological stages of cereal crops in Northern and Central Europe under climate change. Records on dates of sowing, flowering, and maturity of wheat, oats and maize were collected from field experiments conducted during the period 1985-2009. Data for spring wheat and spring oats covered latitudes from 46 to 64°N, winter wheat from 46 to 61°N, and maize from 47 to 58°N. The number of observations (site-year-variety combinations) varied with phenological phase, but exceeded 2190, 227, 2076 and 1506 for winter wheat, spring wheat, spring oats and maize, respectively. The data were used to fit simple crop development models, assuming that the duration of the period until flowering depends on temperature and day length for wheat and oats, and on temperature for maize, and that the duration of the period from flowering to maturity in all species depends on temperature only. Species-specific base temperatures were used. Sowing date of spring cereals was estimated using a threshold temperature for the mean air temperature during 10 days prior to sowing. The mean estimated temperature thresholds for sowing were 6.1, 7.1 and 10.1°C for oats, wheat and maize, respectively. For spring oats and wheat the temperature threshold increased with latitude. The effective temperature sums required for both flowering and maturity increased with increasing mean annual temperature of the location, indicating that varieties are well adapted to given conditions. The responses of wheat and oats were largest for the period from flowering to maturity. Changes in timing of cereal phenology by 2040 were assessed for two climate model projections according to the observed dependencies on temperature and day length. The results showed advancements of sowing date of spring cereals by 1-3 weeks depending on climate model and region within Europe. The changes were largest in Northern Europe. Timing of flowering and maturity were projected to advance by 1-3 weeks. The changes were largest for grain maize and smallest for winter wheat, and they were generally largest in the western and northern part of the domain. There were considerable differences in predicted timing of sowing, flowering and maturity between the two climate model projections applied.

Abstract: Food security relies on the resilience of staple food crops to climatic variability and extremes, but the climate resilience of European wheat is unknown. A diversity of responses to disturbance is considered a key determinant of resilience. The capacity of a sole crop genotype to perform well under climatic variability is limited; therefore, a set of cultivars with diverse responses to weather conditions critical to crop yield is required. Here, we show a decline in the response diversity of wheat in farmers’ fields in most European countries after 2002-2009 based on 101,000 cultivar yield observations. Similar responses to weather were identified in cultivar trials among central European countries and southern European countries. A response diversity hotspot appeared in the trials in Slovakia, while response diversity “deserts” were identified in Czechia and Germany and for durum wheat in southern Europe. Positive responses to abundant precipitation were lacking. This assessment suggests that current breeding programs and cultivar selection practices do not sufficiently prepare for climatic uncertainty and variability. Consequently, the demand for climate resilience of staple food crops such as wheat must be better articulated. Assessments and communication of response diversity enable collective learning across supply chains. Increased awareness could foster governance of resilience through research and breeding programs, incentives, and regulation.