Projected climate changes and environment suitability of foot yam in major growing areas of India

The projected climatic changes were in the major elephant foot yam growing environments of India which were identified based on expert knowledge and from literature review; and also calibrated and evaluated the EcoCrop model, of FAO to study the impact of 2030 climate the suitability of elephant foot yam in the major growing environments of India. The current and future climatic projections of 22 Global Circulation models from the SRES-A1B emission scenario were used for the study. A total of 9345 unique coordinates, as points was obtained as elephant foot yam presence points in India. The projected change in annual mean temperature and total annual precipitation in the major growing areas ranged from 0.9 to 1.2°C and from 19 to 68 mm respectively. The calibrated data were used to drive the EcoCrop model to find out the suitability of current and future climatic conditions. The change in suitability for all the 22 GCMs used was calculated on pixel basis and the mean suitability change indicate that elephant foot yam is actually positively impacted in the current growing areas of India with 0.8 to 9.6% changes in climate suitability. The overall suitability change in the major elephant foot yam growing areas showed that the crop is potentially highly resilient to future climatic changes.