A MODEL-BASED ASSESSMENT OF IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON BORO RICE YIELD IN BANGLADESH

Rice is the main food crop in densely populated Bangladesh. Regional climatic variations can play an important role in rice productivity. For example, excessive heat or extremely cool conditions disrupt normal plant physiological processes and cause plant injury which, in turn, results in reduction of yield. In this study, the climatic crop productivity model YIELD has been applied to calculate rice productivity for the boro rice growing season (December/January-May) in Bangladesh under changing climatic conditions. The model estimates climatic influences on various rice plant-growth parameters. YIELD was tuned and validated to Bangladesh's environment to represent appropriate agroecological conditions. The model was run using long-term average climate data of 12 meteorological stations located in the major rice-growing regions in Bangladesh to establish baseline estimates of yield. For the climate change study, 20 scenarios were created by synthetically fluctuating thermal and solar climates in Bangladesh. Study results show that per 1° C increase in growing season mean air temperature, boro rice yield was reduced by 4.6%. It was also found that each 10% increase in incident solar radiation resulted in a 6.5% increase of boro rice yield in Bangladesh.