The Hindu Business Line : Climate change could decrease rice yields

Hyderabad, Nov. 22 Climate change is here, threatening adverse effects on crops particularly in dryland areas. Experts at the international symposium on climate change warn that yields of rice could be severely impacted.

“Temperatures at flowering stage is already close to the maximum,” Dr Dyno Keatinge, Deputy Director-General (Research) at ICRISAT, said.

“We have to do something to address this, or yields will fall,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the symposium here on Thursday.

According to Mr Martin Parry, Co-Chair of Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the globe was already halfway to the projected increase of two degrees Celsius over a period of time. While it witnessed increase of 0.5 degrees already, another 0.6 degrees was in the water system.

Resilience Revolution

Stating that the challenge was very big, Dr Parry said it was time to achieve ‘resilience revolution’, working on crops that were resilient to climate change.

Referring to the upcoming meeting in Bali, he felt that the countries should at least decide on a proper political action by the subsequent meeting scheduled to be held two years later in Copenhagen.

“If we fail to have an action plan by 15 years, it will be more than what we can adopt,” he said.

Dr William Dar, Director-General of Icrisat (International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics), called upon the countries in the North and South to make corrective measures happen. “If we don’t act now, it will have serious repercussions having catastrophic results,” he said.

Dr Keatinge said continuous funding to institutes like Icrisat held the key in finding solutions and helping the vulnerable and poor in facing the ill-effects of climate change.

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