**Corn and Climate Change**

**Chapter 6**

Provisional chapter

**Climate Change Impacts on Corn Phenology and**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.76933

Global climate is changing and will impact future production of all food and feed crops. Corn is no exception and to ensure a future supply we must begin to understand how climate impacts both the phenological development of corn and the productivity. Temperature and precipitation are the two climate factors that will have a major benefit on corn phenology and productivity. The warming climate will accelerate the phenological development because the number of thermal units required for leaf appearance is relatively constant in the vegetative stage. Productivity of corn is reduced when extreme temperature events occur during pollination and is further exaggerated when there are water deficits at pollination. During the grain-filling period, warm temperatures above the upper threshold cause a reduction in yield. Model estimates suggest that for every 1C increase in temperature there is nearly a 10% yield reduction. To meet world demand, new adaptation practices are needed to provide water to the growing crop and avoid extreme temperature events during the growing season. Climate change will continue to affect corn production and understanding these effects will help determine where future production areas exist and innovative adaptation practices to benefit yield stability could be

Keywords: agroclimatic indices, simulation models, G E M interactions

Corn (Zea mays L.) is grown throughout the world and as such is subject to a wide variety of climates and potential scenarios of climate change. Production area continues to increase in response to the increased demand for corn grain and the production per unit area (yield) has continued to increase due to enhanced technology (Figure 1). What is imperative to stability

> © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Climate Change Impacts on Corn Phenology and

**Productivity**

Abstract

utilized.

1. Introduction

Productivity

Jerry L. Hatfield and Christian Dold

Jerry L. Hatfield and Christian Dold

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76933

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

#### **Climate Change Impacts on Corn Phenology and Productivity** Climate Change Impacts on Corn Phenology and Productivity

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.76933

Jerry L. Hatfield and Christian Dold Jerry L. Hatfield and Christian Dold

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76933

#### Abstract

Global climate is changing and will impact future production of all food and feed crops. Corn is no exception and to ensure a future supply we must begin to understand how climate impacts both the phenological development of corn and the productivity. Temperature and precipitation are the two climate factors that will have a major benefit on corn phenology and productivity. The warming climate will accelerate the phenological development because the number of thermal units required for leaf appearance is relatively constant in the vegetative stage. Productivity of corn is reduced when extreme temperature events occur during pollination and is further exaggerated when there are water deficits at pollination. During the grain-filling period, warm temperatures above the upper threshold cause a reduction in yield. Model estimates suggest that for every 1C increase in temperature there is nearly a 10% yield reduction. To meet world demand, new adaptation practices are needed to provide water to the growing crop and avoid extreme temperature events during the growing season. Climate change will continue to affect corn production and understanding these effects will help determine where future production areas exist and innovative adaptation practices to benefit yield stability could be utilized.

Keywords: agroclimatic indices, simulation models, G E M interactions
