Assessing the impact of climate variability on maize yields in the different regions of Ghana—A machine learning perspective

having a strong positive impact on maize yield. This supports the findings of Baffour-Ata et al. [28] which found that the benefit of maize yield across the climate variables is attributed to the positive impact of CO2. All the climate variables are crucial and have a positive impact on maize yield with none showing negative importance. However, some of them have a stronger impact on maize yield in the regions. The Greater Accra region, the Brong Ahafo region, and the Upper east region all consider precipitation to be a crucial factor in predicting maize yield. Minimum temperature has less impact in the regions that are part of the Guinea savanna zone Fig 4. The feature importance of the climate variables in predicting maize yield in each region of Ghana. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305762.g004 PLOS ONE Impact of climate variability on maize yields in Ghana PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305762 June 25, 2024 18 / 24