3. Statement of the problem

Nigeria's ecological conditions and cultural diversities put the country at an advantage for production of a wide range of food products [25]. However, the Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2014 classified Nigeria's vulnerability as extreme and ranked the country as number six [6] most vulnerable country to climate change [39, 48]. This extreme vulnerability has negative implications for agricultural production and food security, especially in South-eastern Nigeria.

The awareness of farmers to adopting improved seed varieties as a panacea for climate change adaptation, has been relatively widely studied in Nigeria [3, 4, 9, 11, 13, 42, 50]. However, most previous climate change research measured the level of change in decades (long term) without considering the short term effects and adaptations [40]. The above illustrations also apply to Nigerian South-eastern states including Anambra State [6].

In a nutshell, smallholder maize farmers with a deep understanding of the specific environmental factors that determine or limit the growth of their crops, would have better capabilities to significantly increase their crop yields by making through rightful choices and using of novelty approaches of climate smart agriculture. Therefore, understudying the relative influence of farmers' awareness toward curbing severe climate change impacts on their maize plant growth and yield, is very crucial.

The pervasive role of Geospatial technology in solving agricultural problems has widely been established. Therefore, Geographical Information System (GIS) is a type of Geospatial technology that provides the means to collect and use geographic data to assist in support of food production and food security. GIS is a system for capturing, storing, analyzing and managing data and associated attributes, which are spatially referenced to the Earth [51].

Therefore, the overall objective of this present study is to fill the knowledge gap between the perception of smallholders' maize farmers on climate variability and their use of climate change adaptation approaches in relation to GIS, toward contributing to sustainable food security in Anambra State, South-eastern Nigeria.
