Implications of Elevated Temperature due to Changing Climate on Cotton Crop

Due to anthropogenic forces which poses climate change the temperature is increasing as per IPCC reports (Newman, 2016). In general, temperature influences the duration of a crop's growing period. Therefore it may control the phenological development and water requirements indirectly. Increasing temperature also increases photosynthesis and other metabolic processes, until a crop type specific temperature optimum is reached. Cotton in its native state grows as a perennial shrub in a semi-arid habitat, and thus requires warm temperatures. Cotton despite being is a thermophilic plant and originating from hot does not necessarily yield higher at excessively high temperatures. Thus we can say it has a negative correlation between harvested yield and high temperature as observed in model studies. In this study effect of long-term averages of weather parameters such as temperature precipitation and sunshine i.e. the climatology of Hisar region on cotton crop is studied. For simulation of model three Bt-cotton crop varieties Pancham-541, RCH-791, SP-7007for three sowing dates have been selected. Further to examine the impact increase in temperature due to climate change 1ºC has been added at three time steps in the model upon the observed climatology of the study region. From the simulated output eight parameters has been taken to assess the impact. These parameters includes Anthesis date, Evapotranspiration (mm), Tops Nitrogen at Maturity (kg/ha), Days to harvest, Leaf Area Index (Maximum), Maturity date, Harvest index and Harvested yield (kg/ha). Model output depicts that Anthesis date, Evapotranspiration, Tops Nitrogen at Maturity (kg/ha), Leaf Area Index (Maximum), Maturity date and Days to harvest has increasing trend with increasing temperature. On the other hand Harvest index and Harvested yield (kg/ha) has decreasing trend with increasing temperature for all the cultivars. This shows that with increasing temperature if derived due to climate change the crop yield may decrease.