TITLE:
Crop Yield Sensitivity to Climatic Variability as the Basis for Creating Climate Resilient Agriculture
AUTHORS:
David Chikodzi
KEYWORDS:
Climate Change, Crop Yield Sensitivity, Climate Resilience, Buhera District
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.5 No.1,
March
30,
2016
ABSTRACT: Climate change and variability are presenting challenges to the agricultural sector as well as agricultural sustainability in Zimbabwe. This paper was aimed at investigating the impacts of climate change and variability on maize, sorghum and groundnut production in the Buhera district of Zimbabwe. The paper specifically determined the climatic scenarios in Buhera and how crop production is sensitive to them. Temperature and rainfall data used were obtained from the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department. Crop yield data for maize, sorghum and groundnuts were obtained from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Extension Buhera District office. The Mann-Kendall Trend test was then used to determine if there were significant changes in the precipitation and temperature scenarios at Buhera weather station. Before performing the Mann-Kendall test, the time series data were first tested for auto-correlation. Finally the Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used to determine how precipitation and crop yields were related and the strength of their relationships. Mann-Kendall trend tests reviewed that only mean minimum temperatures show significant trends over time (p = 0.003, α = 0.05). Correlation analysis showed that only maize showed a significant correlation coefficient with the amount of rainfall (r = 0.79, r2 = 0.625 and p = 0.001, α = 0.05). The research showed that groundnuts were the least sensitive to climatic variations followed by sorghum; hence their production offers the best climatic resilience and must be encouraged to local subsistence farmers.