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Study: Future drought will offset benefits of higher CO2 on soybean yields

EurekAlert, 6 Sept 16 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, CHAMPAIGN, ILL. — An eight-year study of soybeans grown outdoors in a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere like that expected by 2050 has yielded a new and worrisome finding: Higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations will boost plant growth under ideal growing conditions, but drought – expected to worsen as the climate warms and rainfall patterns change – will outweigh those benefits and cause yield losses much sooner than anticipated.

The new discovery, reported in the journal Nature Plants, contradicts a widely accepted hypothesis about how climate change will affect food production, said University of Illinois plant biology professor Andrew Leakey, who led the new research…….http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-09/uoia-sfd090116.php

September 7, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, USA