Diverging impacts of climate change on the global potential diversity of food crops

Abstract

Abstract Climate change alters the climatic suitability of important food production areas, likely shifting the spatial distribution and diversity of future production. In existing research, there is limited knowledge on the future climatic suitability of croplands for food crop types beyond the staple four: rice, maize, wheat, and soybean. Further, focusing on a limited number of crop types has hindered analysing how the diversity of food crop production might change in the future. This study extends existing knowledge by projecting geographical shifts in the climatic niches of 27 major food crops and assessing how these shifts affect current crop production and the potential diversity of food crops on the current global croplands. We define the climatic niche for each crop according to the historical climatic extent of their current cultivation areas and perform future analyses at 1.5–5°C global warming. We find that in regions located in low latitudes, 10% – 32% of current production would shift outside the crop specific climatic niches, and potential crop diversity would decline on half of the current cropland area already at 2°C global warming. In contrast, we find increasing potential crop diversity in mid-to-high latitudes, providing opportunities for climate change adaptation. These results highlight large regional differences in the adaptation potential and vulnerability of the global food system at varying levels of global warming.