Heat Effects on African Maize
Nature Climate Change - March 13, 2011, Nonlinear heat effects on African maize as evidenced by historical yield trials
The newly published Nature papers are interesting as they have pinned down the negative effects of heat, as well as, drought in corn yields. In the last few years, Dr. David Lobell, of Stanford University, has done some intensive modeling and calculations correlating the effect of heat stress with crop yield. What is interesting in this study is that he is now able to access data from 20,000 actual African corn yield trials to look at the impact on heat with or without the presence of drought.
To put these numbers in perspective, they indicate that under non-drought conditions 65% of the area in Africa that is under maize cultivation, at present, and would experience yield losses, with 75% of this area suffering yield losses of at least 20%...
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