"Reductions in India's crop yield due to ozone," by S. D. Ghude et al., GRL (2014); doi: 10.1002/2014GL060930

Geophysical Research Letters, (28 July 2014); DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060930

Reductions in India's crop yield due to ozone

Sachin D. Ghude*, Chinmay Jena, D. M. Chate, G. Beig, G. G. Pfister, Rajesh Kumar and V. Ramnathan*

Abstract

This bottom-up modeling study, supported by emission inventories and crop production, simulates ozone on local to regional scales. It quantifies, for the first time, potential impact of ozone on district-wise cotton, soybeans, rice and wheat crops in India for the first decade of the 21st century. Wheat is the most impacted crop with losses of 3.5 ± 0.8 Mt, followed by rice at 2.1 ± 0.8 Mt, with the losses concentrated in central and north India. On national scale, this loss is about 12% of the cereals required every year (61.2 Mt) under the provision of recently implemented National Food Security Bill (September-2013) by Government of India. The nationally aggregated yield loss is sufficient to feed 94 million people living below poverty line in India.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL060930/abstract