Model ‐based evaluation of climate change impacts on rice grain quality in the main European rice district

We present here a modeling study to evaluate the future trends of rice quality in the main European rice district, placed in Northern Italy. A rice growth model was coupled with a library of models of rice milling and cooking suitability, using current farmer management and baseline/future climatic scenarios as input for the simulations. Four general circulation models (NOResm, MIROC-ESM, HadGEM2-ES, and GISS-ES) and two CO2 representative concentration pathways (2.6, 8.5) were used to generate 20-year future climatic data centered on 2030 and 2070. Spatially distributed simulations were run at 2  × 2 km spatial resolution considering aJaponica (Loto) and aTropical Japonica (Gladio) rice cultivar. The results depicted an overall decline in rice quality, especially for Loto ( −5% of milling suitability considering GISS-ES-2.6 in all time frames; −8% in 2030 and −20% in 2070 under HadGEM2-ES-8.5). While the revenues of millers are expected to decrease of about 50 € t−1 in 2030 and 100  € t−1 in 2070 for Loto, minor changes are projected on Gladio milling and cooking suitability, except in the worst scenario in 2070 ( −10 to −5% of cooking suitability, corresponding to −30 to −72 € t−1). Despite the need of reducing models uncertainty, this study provides variety-specific indications on rice grain quality ready-to-use for crop specialists, farmers, and millers and that could raise the interest of different stakeholders of the agri-food sector,...
Source: Food and Energy Security - Category: Food Science Authors: Tags: ORIGINAL RESEARCH Source Type: research