Impacts of climate change on agro-climatic suitability of major food crops in Ghana

suitability will be for cassava and sorghum, and groundnut and sorghum. There are also differ- ences in dual crop suitability between the north and south of Ghana (S3 Table). 4. Discussion The impacts of climate change on food security are multi-faceted. Therefore, in this study we quantified the impacts of climate change on the multiple crop potential by assessing the suit- ability of key food crops in the case of Ghana. A model for estimating crop suitability for maize, sorghum, cassava and groundnuts under current climate was constructed, which reli- ably reproduced observed suitability patterns. Therefore, we deem the model as sufficiently robust to predict the suitability of the four crops under future climate conditions. We identi- fied, quantified and mapped individual and multiple crop suitability for assessing impact areas projected climatic conditions. 4.1 Contribution of variables to crop suitability in Ghana Important biophysical predictors of the suitability of each crop were identified and these corre- spond to the reported crop requirements, growing conditions and spatial distribution of the four crops in Ghana [70–72]. The finding that precipitation-based factors are most important for the suitability of maize, sorghum and cassava is in line with other studies as rainfall remains the most important determinant of agricultural production in many African countries. For example, drought stress and related plant water availability constraints have been singled out as the most limiting factors for these crops in West Africa and elsewhere[8, 73–76], particularly

as these crops are almost entirely produced under rain-fed conditions. Fig 5. Modelled suitability maps of four crops under (a) current (b) RCP2.6 and (c) RCP8.5 climatic conditions for Ghana. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229881.g005 PLOS ONE Climate change and food crops suitability in Ghana PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229881 June 29, 2020 12 / 21