After praising Google’s AI Overviews as a “wonderful tool” in my last post, I was sorely disappointed in its response to my query “adaptation to unpredictable weather”. This is what I got for crops:
Planting drought-resistant crops
Changing crop planting times or varieties
Practicing regenerative agriculture*.
That’s it. Here’s more from my own research, based mostly on adaptation strategies described in "Agronomic practices for enhancing resilience in crop plants” (Chauhan et al, 2023), with additional linked sources provided throughout.
Soil Health and Nutrient Management
Cover Cropping
Heavy rains are already becoming more frequent in some areas, increasing soil erosion and nutrient runoff problems. Wetter weather reduces the number of days that fields can be worked. Planting cover crops to help adapt to these climate trends. Compared to leaving soil bare between cash cropping periods, continuously growing plants in a field provides many benefits. Cover crops increase soil organic matter, and improve soil fertility by capturing excess nutrients after a crop is harvested. They also raise soil moisture holding capacity, help prevent soil erosion, limit nutrient runoff, reduce soil compaction, and can even help suppress some pests. USDA Climate Hub
Organic Amendments
Soil organic matter is made up of living, dead, and decomposing plants, small animals, and microorganisms. Soils high in organic matter retain more moisture, resist compaction, and contain a reservoir of nutrients that are slowly released over time. Organic matter improves soil aeration, water drainage, root growth, and biological activity. It also improves soils high in clay or sand. University of Maryland Extension
Water Management Strategies
Precision Irrigation
Water scarcity is a growing challenge in agriculture. Precision irrigation, such as programmable drip and micro-sprinkler systems, mitigates the impact of water stress on crop resilience. Precision irrigation systems improve crop yields, reduce water waste, reduce nutrient runoff and contamination of water sources, lowers costs, and enhances fertilizer efficiency. Forecasts, sensors, and models enable precision irrigation to optimize irrigation decisions, making it suitable for diverse crop types and climatic conditions. Farm21, Lumo and FarmHQ
Rainwater Harvesting
In regions prone to erratic rainfall patterns, rainfall harvesting allows farmers to capture water from rain and snowmelt when they’re available and store enough for crop irrigation and sprinkler systems during dry periods. Collected water is redirected to a tank, cistern, deep pit (well, shaft, or borehole), aquifer, or a reservoir with percolation, so that it seeps down and restores the ground water. For farmers, rainwater harvesting provides a dependable water source that can improve crop yields. This water usually has lower levels of salinity and harmful minerals, which helps in maintaining soil quality and plant health. Collecting rainwater also reduces the volume of runoff during heavy rainfall, which can help mitigate flooding and soil erosion. Smart Water
Pest and Disease Management
Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an environmentally sensitive approach that reduces and supplements the use of pesticides by employing a variety of other techniques to control pests. These include biological control through the use of natural enemies, such as predators, parasites, and pathogens, to control pests, as well as habitat manipulation, such as by planting hedgerows to ensure natural enemies are present in sufficient numbers to suppress pest populations. The goal is to develop resilient cropping systems that can withstand climate-related changes in the distribution, diversity, and abundance of agricultural pests. EPA, USDA, CDC, The Impact of Climate Change on Agricultural Insect Pests
Disease-Resistant Crop Varieties
Changes in temperature and humidity will also impact the distribution, diversity and abundance of plant pathogens, such as fungi, bacteria and oomycetes. As with pests, farmers will need a variety of strategies to manage plant diseases. The cultivation of disease-resistant crop varieties is a key strategy that has acquired considerable momentum in recent years, made possible by advances in plant breeding, genetic modification and genome editing. Climate change and plant pathogens
Crop Rotation
Crop rotation and diversification play a crucial role in breaking pest and disease cycles while also improving soil health. One of the primary advantages of crop rotation lies in its ability to disrupt pest and disease cycles. By rotating crops strategically, farmers can deter the buildup of specific pests and diseases that target particular plant species. This not only minimizes the reliance on chemical interventions but also promotes a balanced, healthier and resilient agroecosystem. Agronomic practices for enhancing resilience in crop plants
Drought-Resistant Crops
Biotechnological tools, including AI-assisted breeding programs, genetic modification and gene editing, offer opportunities to develop drought-resistant crops. AI technologies can be used to analyze large amounts of data and identify patterns that can aid in selecting superior plant varieties used in plant breeding to accelerate crop improvement and develop new varieties with higher yields and greater resilience to climate changes, especially more frequent and severe periods of drought. CRISPR gene editing has already revolutionized plant breeding, leading to improvement in drought tolerance and yield. Machine Learning-Assisted Approaches in Modernized Plant Breeding Programs CRISPR–Cas9-based genetic engineering for crop improvement under drought stress
More on gene editing:
“With gene-edited plants, scientists can tweak the plants’ own genes by editing in small mutations, in effect creating changes that could have happened naturally. That means they can improve plants without DNA from other organisms. Gene editing can thus be thought of as equivalent to fantastically fortuitous breeding.
Gene-edited crops may also help adaptation to climate change. Take rice. Scientists from the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, used CRISPR to limit the pores through which rice loses water, making it more drought-resistant. They are also editing rice to better capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the ground. Others at the institute hope to edit the methane-making microbes that live in rice paddies, generating 10% of the world’s methane emissions. And gene-editing biotechs are working on less resource-intensive versions of soy, potatoes, bananas and more.” - Eat your GE-greens/The Economist, February 21, 2025
This list of adaptation strategies is far from complete. But it’s enough for me to feel fairly confident our crops will maintain or even improve their yields in a warmer world, assuming that warming since preindustrial times will have increased no more than 2.4°C by the end of this century, which is the time frame for all these posts.
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* Regenerative agriculture is not a specific practice. It combines a variety of sustainable agriculture techniques. (Wikipedia)
Reference:
Chauhan, Aman Pratap Singh, Dheerendra Singh, Om Prakash Sharma, Nishita Kushwah, and Alpana Kumhare. "Agronomic practices for enhancing resilience in crop plants." Plant Science Archives. V08i03 1 (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.51470/PSA.2023.8.3.01