Expected global suitability of coffee, cashew and avocado due to climate change

RESEARCH ARTICLE Expected global suitability of coffee, cashew and avocado due to climate change Roman Gru¨ terID*, Tim Trachsel, Patrick Laube, Isabel Jaisli Institute of Natural Resource Sciences, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Wa¨ denswil, Switzerland * roman.grueter@zhaw.ch Abstract Coffee, cashew and avocado are of high socio-economic importance in many tropical small- holder farming systems around the globe. As plantation crops with a long lifespan, their culti- vation requires long-term planning. The evaluation of climate change impacts on their biophysical suitability is therefore essential for developing adaptation measures and select- ing appropriate varieties or crops. In this study, we modelled the current and future suitability of coffee arabica, cashew and avocado on a global scale based on climatic and soil require- ments of the three crops. We used climate outputs of 14 global circulation models based on three emission scenarios to model the future (2050) climate change impacts on the crops both globally and in the main producing countries. For all three crops, climatic factors, mainly long dry seasons, mean temperatures (high and low), low minimum temperatures and annual precipitation (high and low), were more restrictive for the global extent of suitable growing regions than land and soil parameters, which were primarily low soil pH, unfavour- able soil texture and steep slopes. We found shifts in suitable growing regions due to climate change with both regions of future expansion and contraction for all crops investigated. Cof-

fee proved to be most vulnerable, with negative climate impacts dominating in all main pro- ducing regions. For both cashew and avocado, areas suitable for cultivation are expected to expand globally while in most main producing countries, the areas of highest suitability may decrease. The study reveals that climate change adaptation will be necessary in most major producing regions of all three crops. At high latitudes and high altitudes, however, they may all profit from increasing minimum temperatures. The study presents the first global assess- ment of climate change impacts on cashew and avocado suitability. Introduction Plantation crops such as coffee, cashew and avocado are among the most important cash crops and contribute substantially to the livelihoods of smallholder farmers around the world. These crops have a lifespan of several decades and therefore long-term agricultural planning consid- ering the expected impacts of climate change is especially important. Global warming of 1.2 up to 3.0˚C by 2050 is estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change depending on different greenhouse gas emission pathways [1]. Such changes in temperature will directly PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261976 January 26, 2022 1 / 24 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Gru¨ter R, Trachsel T, Laube P, Jaisli I (2022) Expected global suitability of coffee, cashew and avocado due to climate change. PLoS ONE 17(1): e0261976. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0261976

Editor: Abel Chemura, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, GERMANY Received: April 22, 2021 Accepted: December 14, 2021 Published: January 26, 2022 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261976 Copyright: © 2022 Gru¨ter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All resulting suitability maps are available from the Figshare repository (DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.17702459). Funding: This study has been funded by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.