Zhang, Ermei , Liu, Yujie , Tan, Qinghua , Chen, Jiahao , Pan, Tao
2025-05-25 JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION 2025 508(卷), null(期), (null页)
Sustaining future crop yield growth is significant for ensuring global food security under climate change impact. Agricultural management presents a viable strategy to address the increase in crop production. However, the understanding of the potential effects of climate change and key agricultural management (such as irrigation and machinery) on future crop yields under the latest climate scenarios remains elusive. Here, we collected statistics from historical periods (1980-2011) on wheat yields and agricultural management covering 11 representative agro-ecological zones across China. A yield estimation framework based on machine learning models and Bayesian model averaging was developed. We reliably projected changes in wheat yield and assessed the effectiveness of agricultural management (irrigation, fertilizer, and machinery) across China, for two future periods (near-term: 2021-2040; mid-term: 2041-2060) under updated shared socioeconomic pathwayrepresentative concentration pathways (SSP-RCP) scenarios. Main conclusions are as follows: (1) wheat yield is expected to diminish by an average of approximately 1 % across China for SSP5-8.5 in all periods. Especially, the Northwest spring wheat zone (NWS) was identified as a region with high-risk for future wheat production because of a marked yield loss (over 10 % on average) across all climate scenarios during the mid-term period. (2) Simulated wheat yield in China exhibited an average increase of 2 % with 10 % synergistic increases in irrigation, fertilizer, and machinery levels. Individual increase in irrigation level had a greater positive effect on wheat yield compared to machinery and fertilizer under all climate scenarios and periods. (3) Wheat yields in arid regions (such as NWS) would benefit more from the improvements in irrigation level under all climate scenarios for near-term period. These findings provide valuable insights for policymakers to develop innovative solutions in climate change adaptation.