Global Agricultural Production: Resilience to Climate Change

This book covers all aspects related to climate change and agriculture. The book discusses Global Climate Models (GCMs), Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and application of strategic management tool that includes RCP (Representative concentration Pathway), SSP (Shared Socio-economic Pathways) and SPA (Shared climate Policy Assumptions).

The book provides information on how climate change, agricultural productivity and food security are interlinked. The impacts of climate change on food security are studied through different climatic drivers e.g., ENSO (El Niño–Southern Oscillation) and SOI (Southern Oscillation Index). These drivers are responsible for the climatic extreme events hence early prediction of these drivers could help to design appropriate adaptive measures for the agriculture sector and could be considered as early warning tools for risk management.

Similarly, climate change and process-based soil modeling as well as the role of soil microbes andclimate smart agriculture are discussed in this book.

Climate change impacts on legume crop production and adaptation strategies are presented, with details about cereal crop modeling, perspectives of Camelina sativa as well as low input biofuel and oilseed crop, greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions and mitigation strategies.

Mukhtar Ahmed’s research focuses on the impact of climate change on crop ecology, crop physiology, cropping system and rain-fed ecosystem management. He has been involved in teaching and research since 2005. During his PhD and visit to Sydney University, Australia, he worked on the application of APSIM as a decision support tool and rainfall forecasting using generalised additive models. He was awarded a young scientist fellowship by APCC South Korea. He also won a research productivity award from Pakistan Council of Science and Technology (PCST) and a Publons reviewer award in 2018 and 2019.  He was part of the Regional Approaches for Climate Change (REACCH) project in the USA, which developed multi-model ensemble approaches to minimize the uncertainties. He is involved in the use of statistical and dynamic models as risk management tools to mitigate the challenges of climate change. Dr. Ahmed also has experience in applying his expertise in Nordic climate atSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences (2019-2021) where he was involved in the adaptability of perennial grasses e.g., red clover and yellow lucerne under changing climate as well as in whole farm modeling, precision agriculture and APSIM next generation modeling. His current research includes agroecosystems modelling, precision agriculture, modelling the nutrient use efficiency of legume-based cropping systems, forage agronomy and physiological responses to climate variability and its modelling. He is a project co-leader in the Model Calibration Group of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AGMIP) Wheat and Maize Evapotranspiration. Dr. Ahmed has published more than 100 articles in well-known high quality solid journals and he is the author of 50 book chapters. He has an H-Index of 33 with citations of more than 3500. He is an editor and reviewer of several peer-reviewed, international journals. He is also an active lifetime member of professional societies like the Pakistan Society of Agronomy and Pakistan Society of Botany. He has attended and presented papers and posters at national and international conferences in various countries.