P.K. Aggarwal

• Ph.D.
• Program Leader at Borlaug Institute for South Asia. International Centre for Maize and Wheat Reserach (CIMMYT)

Increasing agricultural production with current resources and technology may lead to increased GHG emissions. Additionally, large population countries like India face substantial challenges in terms of food demand, agro-ecological heterogeneity, carbon footprint and depleting natural resources, thus increasing the decision complexities for policyma...

The climate change impact and adaptation simulations from the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) for wheat provide a unique dataset of multi-model ensemble simulations for 60 representative global locations covering all global wheat mega environments. The multi-model ensemble reported here has been thoroughly benchma...

Our food systems have performed well in the past, but they are failing us in the face of climate change and other challenges. This book tells the story of why food system transformation is needed, how it can be achieved and how research can be a catalyst for change. Written by a global interdisciplinary team of researchers, it brings together persp...

The present study describes a new dataset that estimates seasonally integrated agricultural gross primary productivity (GPP). Several models are being used to estimate GPP using remote sensing (RS) for regional and global studies. Using biophysical and climatic variables (MODIS, SBSS, ECWMF reanalysis etc.) and validated by crop statistics, the pre...

Following the UNFCCC Paris Agreement, most nations made commitments within their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. However, these commitments need to be assessed in relation with ground truth, including bio-physical and socio-economic limits to climate action. We propose a new framework for moni...

Climate change and associated increase in climatic variability is projected to increase risks to our food security. Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), which includes several technological, institutional and policy interventions, can help us increase production and adapt to climate change with significant greenhouse gases (GHG) mitigation co-benefits....

COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in widespread global disruptions. While much is being discussed about the health and economic impacts, there has been a limited focus on the immediate food sector shocks and their related social implications in developing countries, especially when the farmer surveys cannot be conducted due to mobility restrictions in...

With a global market of 30 billion USD, agricultural insurance plays a key role in risk finance and contributes to climate change adaptation by achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including no poverty, zero hunger, and climate action. The existing evidence in agricultural insurance is scattered across regions, topics and risks, and a str...

Climate-smart agriculture targets integrated adaptation and mitigation strategies for delivering food security and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. This study outlines a methodology to identify the trade-offs between food production, emissions, and income under technology and food demand-shift scenario and climate change. The methodology uses Cl...

Real-time knowledge about crop growth conditions is critical to make decisions about risk management and food security planning. Several crop forecasting decision support systems (DSSs) are available which use crop models, remote sensing, weather derivatives or statistical modelling. The results from such DSS are conditioned to the goodness of the...

Local-scale crop yield datasets are not readily available in most of the developing world. Local-scale crop yield datasets are of great use for risk transfer and risk management in agriculture. In this article, we present a simple method for disaggregation of district-level production statistics over crop pixels by using a remote sensing approach....

There is rising interest among research and development practitioners to arrive at impact driven solutions in the field of gender and climate change adaptation. Climate change adaptation interventions can be better targeted by being linked with type of climatic risks experienced by women farmers, their social profile and their needs based on the ro...

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has a significant role to play in reducing the gender gap in labor burden for women in agriculture. A targeted approach to address this gap can be useful in developing a women-responsive climatic risk management plan focused on reducing their labor burden in agriculture, especially in areas with high climate risks. T...

This briefing note summarizes the key findings of the “Scaling up climate-smart agriculture in the Telangana State” project, carried out by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and partners, between 2016 and 2019. The science based CSA policy process outlined in this briefing note could easily be replicated in other...

The Government of India has pursued policies supporting the development of agrarian economy through the promotion of green revolution technologies. A first-order quantitative assessment of the impact of these development policies on mitigation, adaptation, resilience and sustainability has been undertaken with the help of specific performance indic...

This study was undertaken to assess farmers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for various climate-smart interventions in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The research output will be helpful in integrating farmers’ choices with government programs in the selected regions. The Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) was selected because it is highly vulnerable to...

New farming systems and management options are needed in South Asia as the intensive rice–wheat production system is set to become increasingly unsustainable under climate change. In the current study, six cropping systems options/treatments varying in tillage, crop establishment method, residue management, crop sequence and fertilizer and water ma...

New farming systems and management options are needed in South Asia as the intensive rice-wheat production system is set to become increasingly unsustainable under climate change. In the current study, six cropping systems options/treatments varying in tillage, crop establishment method, residue management, crop sequence and fertilizer and water ma...

Gender integration across national policy processes is critical to ensure effective implementation of climate change adaptation interventions in agriculture. This is especially so for countries like Nepal, where climate vulnerability and women participation in agriculture is high, accompanied by gender gaps in access to information, technologies, m...

The increasing frequency of climatic risks, such as flood, drought, heat and cold waves, is causing significant loss of farm productivity and income in agriculturally dependent communities. Timely availability of reliable information on weather conditions, agro-advisories, and market information can help to minimize losses in agriculture. This pape...

This paper presents a framework to prioritize locally suitable climate-smart agricultural (CSA) interventions and implementation suitability assessments with key stakeholders: state and district agriculture departments, extension offices, agriculture research institutions, NGOs and donor agencies, private sector and farmers. Prioritization of appro...

Weather-based crop insurance is a powerful tool for stabilizing farmers’ income by providing timely payouts directly linked with weather parameters. However, its performance can be marred by faulty design, leading to high basis risk and insufficient payouts. This paper presents a new methodology for contract design for weather-based insurance, fiel...

Many assessments of climate change impacts on global crop yields project declines as early as the 2020s. Losses are projected to increase with time, up to 50% by the 2080s. We carry out a systematic global review and compare published projections of climate change impacts from 34 studies and ∼4500 data points for the 2020s for maize, rice and wheat...

The impacts of climate change on crop yields, as projected by a slew of impact assessments carried out since the 1980s, have brought the issue of future food insecurity to the fore. A meta-analysis of ~27,000 data points from studies published over the last four decades reveals that at country level, average impacts of climate change on crop yields...

Regional crop production forecasting is growing in importance in both, the public and private sectors to ensure food security, optimize agricultural management practices and use of resources, and anticipate market fluctuations. Thus, a model and data driven, easy-to-use forecasting and a risk assessment system can be an essential tool for end-users...

Efforts to limit global warming to below 2°C in relation to the pre‐industrial level are under way, in accordance with the 2015 Paris Agreement. However, most impact research on agriculture to date has focused on impacts of warming >2°C on mean crop yields, and many previous studies did not focus sufficiently on extreme events and yield interannual...

Wheat grain protein concentration is an important determinant of wheat quality for human nutrition that is often overlooked in efforts to improve crop production. We tested and applied a 32‐multi‐model ensemble to simulate global wheat yield and quality in a changing climate. Potential benefits of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration by 2050 on g...

The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted under the Paris Agreement propose a country’s contribution to global mitigation efforts and domestic adaptation initiatives. This paper provides a systematic analysis of NDCs submitted by South Asian nations, in order to assess how far their commitments might deliver meaningful contributions...

A recent innovation in assessment of climate change impact on agricultural production has been to use crop multi model ensembles (MMEs). These studies usually find large variability between individual models but that the ensemble mean (e‐mean) and median (e‐median) often seem to predict quite well. However few studies have specifically been concern...

Climate-smart interventions in agriculture have varying costs and environmental and economic impacts. Their implementation requires appropriate investment decisions by policy makers that are relevant for current as well as future scenarios of agro-ecology, climate and economic development. Decision support tools are therefore needed to assist diffe...

In the Ganges basin, 8268.6 km² of irrigation command area is waterlogged following monsoon rains. In this study, vertical drain (VD) (L × D, 7 × 1 m) filled with drainage gravel (6.5 m) and coarse sand (0.5 m) is installed in farmer’s agricultural field to minimize the duration of seasonal waterlogging and tested in Mukundpur village, Vaishalli Di...

The data set reported here includes the part of a Hot Serial Cereal Experiment (HSC) experiment recently used in the AgMIP-Wheat project to analyze the uncertainty of 30 wheat models and quantify their response to temperature. The HSC experiment was conducted in an open-field in a semiarid environment in the southwest USA. The data reported herewit...

This briefing note summarizes the key findings of the “Scaling up climate-smart agriculture in the Telangana State” project, carried out by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and partners, between 1st January 2016 and 31st December 2017. Key messages ■■ Rainfed farming systems in Telangana State, India are increasi...

Increasing weather risks threaten agricultural production systems and food security across the world. Maintaining agricultural growth while minimizing climate shocks is crucial to building a resilient food production system and meeting developmental goals in vulnerable countries. Experts have proposed several technological, institutional, and polic...

Nendel 38 | Jørgen Eivind Olesen 37 | Taru Palosuo 44 | John R. Porter 42,45,46 | Eckart Priesack 39 | Dominique Ripoche 47 | Mikhail A. Semenov 48 | Claudio Stöckle 17 | Pierre Stratonovitch 48 | Thilo Streck 33 | Iwan Supit 49 | Fulu Tao 50,44

Near real time assessment reports on weather deviations and crop conditions using multiple methods and large geospatial databases are being tested through the insurance perspectives for seven major crops in India.

Agriculture in South Asia is largely dependent on rainfall, where about two-thirds of the cultivable lands lack irrigation facilities. In recent years, increasing frequency and severity of droughts have had a severe impact on rainfed agriculture and livelihood of millions of farmers in the region. There are numerous drought adaptation and mitigatio...

Climate change and associated uncertainties have serious direct and indirect consequences for crop production and food security in agriculture-based developing regions. Long-term climate data analysis can identify climate risks and anticipate new ones for planning appropriate adaptation and mitigation options. The aim of this study was to identify...

A report on weather deviations and crop loss assessment for insurance.

Nature Plants 3, 17102 (2017); published online 17 July 2017; corrected online 27 September 2017.

South Asia SA is very vulnerable to current as well as future climatic risks owing to its large population, food demand and poverty. There is an urgency to increase the adaptive capacity of the region's agriculture to a changing climate. This paper highlights a wide range of Climate Smart Agriculture options undertaken to address the risks and chal...

Increasing the accuracy of crop productivity estimates is a key element in planning adaptation strategies to ensure global food security under climate change. Process-based crop models are effective means to project climate impact on crop yield, but have large uncertainty in yield simulations. Here, we show that variations in the mathematical funct...

farmers have since times immemorial been victims of the vagaries of weather and climate. Each year, varying patterns of rain, natural disasters like floods and droughts, bring forth different challenges for the farmers. Against this backdrop, crop insurance acts as a risk transfer mechanism and provides a safety-net to farmers in case of crop failu...

While impacts of climate change on agricultural systems have been widely researched, there is still limited understanding of what agricultural innovations have evolved over time in response to both climatic and non-climatic drivers. Although there has been some progress in formulating national adaptation policies and strategic planning in different...

Since the term ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) was coined in 2010, a growth in strategies, policies, partnerships and investments in the area has been observed. Here we have summarised key CSA efforts globally and in South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, West Africa, and Latin America. We have interpreted CSA in the broad sense, including effo...

Martre P, Reynolds MP, Asseng S, Ewert F, Alderman PD, Cammarano D, Maiorano A, Ruane AC, Aggarwal PK, Anothai J, Basso B, Biernath C, Challinor AJ, De Sanctis G, Doltra J, Dumont B, Fereres E, Garcia-Vila M, Gayler S, Hoogenboom G, Hunt LA, Izaurralde RC, Jabloun M, Jones CD, Kassie BT, Kersebaum KC, Koehler AK, Müller C, Kumar SN, Liu B, Lobell D...

Farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains are constantly seeking ways to adapt to changing circumstances and opportunities that include new technologies, institutions, policies, socio-economic and cultural shifts, as well as a changing climate. The relationship between rainfall and local livelihoods is important to devise policies to improve adaptive cap...

The promotion of climate-smart agriculture in different parts of the world requires a clear understanding of its relative suitability, costs and benefits, and the environmental implications of various technological interventions in a local context under current and future climates. Such data are generally difficult to obtain from the literature, fi...

Addressing climate change impacts on agriculture is special challenge. There are number of factors that influence the extent to which farmers in a particular location adopt CSA technologies. This study applied a participatory assessment method to assess farmers' preferences and willingness-to-pay for selected CSA practices and technologies in diver...

The potential impact of global temperature change on global crop yield has recently been assessed with different methods. Here we show that grid-based and point-based simulations and statistical regressions (from historic records), without deliberate adaptation or CO2 fertilization effects, produce similar estimates of temperature impact on wheat y...

We compare 27 wheat models' yield responses to interannual climate variability, analyzed at locations in Argentina, Australia, India, and The Netherlands as part of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) Wheat Pilot. Each model simulated 1981–2010 grain yield, and we evaluate results against the interannual variabili...

Climate change will have far-reaching impacts on crop, livestock and fisheries production, and will change the prevalence of crop pests. Many of these impacts are already measurable. Climate impact studies are dominated by those on crop yields despite the limitations of climate-crop modelling, with very little attention paid to more systems compone...

Using data from a household survey of 2660 farmfamilies in Bihar state of Eastern India, Terai of Nepal and coastal Bangladesh, we explore the significance of climatic and non-climatic factors in affecting farmers' decision to change their farming practices over time in a wide range of environments. We find evidence across all sites, irrespective o...

Wheat, rice, maize, pearl millet, and sorghum provide over half of the world's food calories. To maintain global food security, with the added challenge of climate change, there is an increasing need to exploit existing genetic variability and develop cultivars with superior genetic yield potential and stress adaptation. The opportunity to share kn...

Using data from a household survey of 2660 farm-families in Bihar state of Eastern India, Terai of Nepal and coastal Bangladesh, we explore the significance of climatic and non-climatic factors in affecting farmers' decision to change their farming practices over time in a wide range of environments. We find evidence across all sites, irrespective...

This book provides experiences from studies on agricultural water management under climate change as references for agriculture and irrigation planners, decision makers, researchers and students. Chapters 2 and 3 provide an overview of global assessment of climate change impacts and water requirement for future agriculture. Chapters 4-7 provide ana...

The data set includes a current representative management treatment from detailed, quality-tested sentinel field experiments with wheat from four contrasting environments including Australia, The Netherlands, India and Argentina. Measurements include local daily climate data (solar radiation, maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation, surface...

Responding to rainfall variability has always been one of the most critical risks facing farmers. It is also an integral part of the job of water managers, whether it be designing interventions for flood management, improving the reliability of water supply for irrigation or advising on priorities during drought conditions. The conventional tools a...

In Uganda, Ghana and Bangladesh, participatory tools were used for a socio-economic and gender analysis of three topics: climate-smart agriculture (CSA), climate analogue approaches, and climate and weather forecasting. Policy and programme- relevant results were obtained. Smallholders are changing agricultural practices due to observations of clim...

p>We investigate whether spatial variations in climatic resource such as rainfall have prompted livelihood diversification, local adaptation and household food availability in Indo-Gangetic Plains using data from a household survey of 2660 farm-families carried out in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. We found that on-farm livelihood sources are higher...

Regional climate models (RCMs) are considered to be more useful than general circulation models for assessing impacts of climate change scenarios in agriculture. In this communication, the climatic outputs of an RCM-PRECIS (providing regional climates for impact studies) model were analysed by comparing its baseline simulation daily weather data on...

Concerns over climate change and climatic variability are growing in South Asia because of the potential detrimental impacts of these phenomena on livelihoods. Such growing concerns demonstrate a need to assess how farmers simultaneously cope with extreme events and adapt to climatic variability. Based on household surveys of 2660 farm families con...

Many simulation studies have been carried out to predict the effect of climate change on crop yield. Typically, in such study, one or several crop models are used to simulate series of crop yield values for different climate scenarios corresponding to different hypotheses of temperature, CO2 concentration, and rainfall changes. These studies usuall...

Crop models are essential tools for assessing the threat of climate change to local and global food production1. Present models used to predict wheat grain yield are highly uncertain when simulating how crops respond to temperature2. Here we systematically tested 30 different wheat crop models of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improveme...

The effects of climate change on crop and terrestrial food production are evident in several regions of the world (high confidence). Negative impacts of climate trends have been more common than positive ones. {Figures 7-2, 7-7} Positive trends are evident in some highlatitude regions (high confidence). Since AR4, there have been several periods of...

Regional planning workshops are a good value-for-money investment for the following reasons: • To build coherent projects and a cohesive regional research for development program portfolio, it is important to have structural dimensions to help harmonize science with development demands. • Bringing project teams together very early in the process wi...

This paper assesses the effect of monsoon droughts on the production, demand, and prices of seven major agricultural commodities - rice, sorghum, pearl millet, maize, pigeon pea, groundnut and cotton. A partial generalised equilibrium model is developed to simulate the effects of deficit rainfall on acreage, yield, production, demand, and prices of...

Crop models of crop growth are increasingly used to quantify the impact of global changes due to climate or crop management. Therefore, accuracy of simulation results is a major concern. Studies with ensembles of crop models can give valuable information about model accuracy and uncertainty, but such studies are difficult to organize and have only...

A simulation study has been carried out using the InfoCrop mustard model to assess the impact of climate change and adaptation gains and to delineate the vulnerable regions for mustard (Brassica juncea (L.) Czernj. Cosson) production in India. On an all India basis, climate change is projected to reduce mustard grain yield by ∼2 % in 2020 (2010–203...

In this paper, the climate change scenarios of A2 and B2 for 2070-2100 time scale (denoted as 2080) for several key locations of India and its impact on rice and wheat crops based on regional climate model (PRECIS) were described. The PRECIS projects an increase in temperature over most parts of India especially in the IGP (Indo-Gangetic Plains), t...