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Journal Article

Global irrigation contribution to wheat and maize yield

Authors

Wang,  Xuhui
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/Christoph.Mueller

Müller,  Christoph
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Elliott,  Joshua
External Organizations;

Mueller,  Nathaniel
External Organizations;

Ciais,  Philippe
External Organizations;

Jägermeyr,  Jonas
External Organizations;

Gerber,  James
External Organizations;

Dumas,  Patrice
External Organizations;

Wang,  Chenzhi
External Organizations;

Yang,  Hui
External Organizations;

Li,  Laurent
External Organizations;

Deryng,  Delphine
External Organizations;

Folberth,  Christian
External Organizations;

Liu,  Wenfeng
External Organizations;

Makowski,  David
External Organizations;

Olin,  Stefan
External Organizations;

Pugh,  Thomas A. M.
External Organizations;

Reddy,  Ashwan
External Organizations;

Schmid,  Erwin
External Organizations;

Jeong,  Sujong
External Organizations;

Zhou,  Feng
External Organizations;

Piao,  Shilong
External Organizations;

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Fulltext (public)

25366oa.pdf
(Publisher version), 26MB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Wang, X., Müller, C., Elliott, J., Mueller, N., Ciais, P., Jägermeyr, J., Gerber, J., Dumas, P., Wang, C., Yang, H., Li, L., Deryng, D., Folberth, C., Liu, W., Makowski, D., Olin, S., Pugh, T. A. M., Reddy, A., Schmid, E., Jeong, S., Zhou, F., Piao, S. (2021): Global irrigation contribution to wheat and maize yield. - Nature Communications, 12, 1235.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21498-5


Cite as: https://publications.pik-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_25366
Abstract
Irrigation is the largest sector of human water use and an important option for increasing crop production and reducing drought impacts. However, the potential for irrigation to contribute to global crop yields remains uncertain. Here, we quantify this contribution for wheat and maize at global scale by developing a Bayesian framework integrating empirical estimates and gridded global crop models on new maps of the relative difference between attainable rainfed and irrigated yield (ΔY). At global scale, ΔY is 34 ± 9% for wheat and 22 ± 13% for maize, with large spatial differences driven more by patterns of precipitation than that of evaporative demand. Comparing irrigation demands with renewable water supply, we find 30–47% of contemporary rainfed agriculture of wheat and maize cannot achieve yield gap closure utilizing current river discharge, unless more water diversion projects are set in place, putting into question the potential of irrigation to mitigate climate change impacts.