Assessment of Crop-Drought Relationship: A Climate Change Perspective

Crop productivity is a highly vulnerable criterion to drought onset and offset. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the crop-drought relationship from the perspective of climate change for sustainable development in agricultural practices. Aurangabad and Pune districts in the state of Maharashtra are considered as the study area. The temporal evolution of the Standardised Yield Residual Series (SYRS) is investigated, and then the impact of the detrended Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) on different crops was studied. The future crop yields for three crops maize, cotton, and wheat, are projected based on the AquaCrop model by considering the bias-corrected ensemble Coupled Model Intercomparison Model Project Phage 6-Global Climate Models (CMIP6-GCMs) under four different Shared Socioeconomic Scenarios (SSPs). The outcomes from the simulation indicated a high increase in crop yield, especially in the high-emission scenario (SSP585). The increase in crop productivity could be attributed to the favourable thermal range, enhanced CO2 concentration, and increase in water productivity of crops. SPEI has a moderate association with the SYRS at various crop productivity phases. The greatest yield-drought relationship existed for wheat and the least for maize during the study period for the Aurangabad region for the Reference Period (RP). Cotton is expected to be more sensitive to drought onset in the future for the Pune region. This approach can assist stakeholders to understand better the impact of drought on the agricultural sectors, which is critical for reducing adverse situations related to drought.