Impact of climate on grain legume yield stability

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The resilience of agricultural systems is key in adapting to climate change. Temporal yield stability, as a measure for the resilience of cropping systems, is confronted by the increased climate variability and increased occurrence of extreme weather events. Yield stability is particularly relevant in Europe-grown grain legumes which produce high quality protein and a range of ecosystem services. Grain legume yields tend to be more variable than other crops and there are first indications of a decrease in yield stability. There is insufficient evidence on the relationship between yield stability of different grain legume species in different environments and changes in climate variability and extreme weather events. Such analyses and a fundamental understanding of the processes involved are needed to inform agronomy and plant breeding efforts to adapt grain legume cropping systems to climate change. The project “Impact of climate on grain legume yield stability” will quantify changes in temporal yield stability and the influence of climate on yield stability for pea, faba bean and soybean in six long-term experiments (LTE) across Europe using a combination of novel statistical methods and simulation modelling. The overall research questions are: (i) did grain legume yield stability decrease during the last 60 years?, (ii) is there a relationship between changes in climate variability and yield stability?, (iii) are weather events during specific crop growth phases affecting yield stability more than annual trends?, and (iv) does the combination of statistical methods and simulation models help to better explain the factors contributing to yield stability than a single method? These questions lead to the following objectives, i.e. (i) to quantify the relationship between climate variability and yield stability for grain legumes in LTE under different bio-physical conditions across Europe, (ii) to quantify the effect of mean annual precipitation and temperature on yield stability, (iii) to quantify the effect of mean precipitation and temperature during flowering and pod filling on yield stability, and (iv) to quantify the effect of drought and heat-stress during flowering and pod filling on yield stability using a combination of statistical methods and simulation modelling. Data on crop yields, phenology and weather from the six LTE across Europe will provide the basis to apply novel statistical analyses using a scale-adjusted yield stability indicator, mixed linear models and process-based simulation models. The combination of these methods enables detecting general trends in yield stability changes over the last decades and relationships between climate variability and yield stability that bring our scientific knowledge on yield stability beyond the state of the art.