[A-AS02] From weather predictability to controllability

[AAS02-P08] Influence of climate variables on rice yield in different agrometeorological zones of Cote d’Ivoire.

*Yacouba Ouattara¹, Hiroaki Somura¹ (1.Graduate School of Environmental and Life Science, Okayama University)

Keywords:Climate change, Climate variables, Rainfall, Rice yield, Temperature, Vulnerability

Agricultural sector is facing many challenges including adaptation to climate change such as an increase of air temperature, unpredictable rainfall pattern and extreme weather events. These changes may affect rice productivity in Cote d’Ivoire. In this work, the Mann-Kendall (MK) test along with the modified MK test and multi-regression analysis were used to assess the impact of climate variables on rice yield in four different agrometeorological zones named zone1, zone2, zone3 and zone4 from the northern part to the southern part of Cote d’Ivoire. Zone1 and zone2 have only one cropping season May-June-July-August (MJJA) while zone3 and zone4 have two cropping seasons April-May-June-July (AMJJ) and October-November-December-January (ONDJ). Results showed that rice yield can be explained by climate variables for about 42%, 49%, 9%, 49%, 67% and 41% in zone1_MJJA, zone2_MJJA, zone3_AMJJ, zone3_ONDJ, zone4_AMJJ and zone4_ONDJ respectively. In the yield variation, a decrease of 149 kg/ha/year and 127 kg/ha/year was observed in zone1_MJJA and zone2_MJJA respectively while an increase of the yield was observed in zone3_AMJJ, zone3_ONDJ, zone4_AMJJ and zone4_ONDJ corresponding to 81 kg/ha/year, 43 kg/ha/year, 29 kg/ha/year, and 40 kg/ha/year from 2012 to 2021 respectively. The results also indicated that, the yield in zone4_AMJJ presented the highest vulnerability to climate variables. On the other hand, the cropping period zone3_AMJJ presented the lowest vulnerability to climate variables (9%). It means non-climatic parameters will be more determinant to the yield for this period.