Chinese climate scientists have identified the stressors that have the largest impact on Arabica coffee yield in subtropical settings, with chill stress found to be the most damaging.
The researchers studied 30 years of climate and coffee yield data from Yunnan, China’s most productive coffee-growing region. Most of what’s known about the impact of climate stressors on coffee yield is based on tropical growing regions, whereas Yunnan is classed as subtropical.
“As geographical shifts to higher latitudes are proposed as a warming climate adaptation, understanding coffee yield response to climate stressors in marginal growing areas is crucial,” write the authors.
Using generalised additive models, the researchers identified the critical climate stressors and quantified their yield impact. Their results demonstrated coffee yield can decrease by 18.9 per cent per one degree Celsius decrease in minimum of daily minimum air temperature during maturity.
In the period studied, chill stress (frost) topped the relative contribution to yield loss for 66 per cent of the counties studied, followed by drought and then heat stress. The researchers highlight that chill stress has been under-addressed in previous analyses.
“Our results could enrich understanding of climate-coffee yield interactions and underscore the need to focus on chill stress in potential coffee-growing regions under future climate change,” write the authors.
“Our analysis can explicitly provide important information to support Yunnan’s initiatives in improving disaster prevention infrastructure for the protection of coffee yields.”
Read the full paper here.
