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

total values. These results concur with findings by earlier studies on the potential impacts of climate change in Ghana which reported groundnuts as less impacted compared to other food crops [5]. Our findings show that sorghum remains a high potential crop in the northern parts of Ghana under a changed climate, as limited areas in these areas decrease. This result under- lines the importance of sorghum, which is already a major food crop in the northern parts of Ghana. The greatest climate change risk was identified for maize which is the crop with the most planted area and the highest net consumption in the country [82]. Apart from the reliance of maize production on rainfall in Ghana, the fact that maize is more sensitive to weather vari- ables than other crops also explain this loss. Maize responds to both warming and increased rainfall variability as water deficit can cause reduced growth by allocating more carbon to the root system, reducing leaf expansion and photosynthesis. Higher temperature, meanwhile, can cause loss of pollen viability, damage to tissue enzymes and accelerated senescence [83]. These severe impacts of climate change on maize production in Africa have already been reported elsewhere [46, 84, 85]. Fig 6. Maps showing the suitability of dual crop suitability for pairwise crop combinations across Ghana under current, RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 climatic scenarios. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229881.g006 PLOS ONE Climate change and food crops suitability in Ghana PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229881 June 29, 2020 14 / 21