Modeled Impact of Climate Change on Sugarcane Yield in Réunion, a Tropical Island

Climate change is expected to have important consequences for sugarcane production due to global warming, changes in precipitation patterns, and changes in the frequency of extreme weather events. A key application of crop growth simulation models is to help understand and predict the effects of and interactions between, climate, soil, and management on crop yield. This study aimed to simulate climate change's impact on potential sugarcane yield in 11 representative locations over the sugarcane areas of Réunion Island from 2015 to 2066 using the Mosicas sugarcane crop growth model. High spatial resolution climate data for the future were obtained from the Building Resilience in the Indian Ocean project conducted by the French National Weather Service. It includes temperature and precipitation under three scenarios of the IPCC. Results showed that, despite a favorable increase in temperature, the change in precipitation patterns resulted in an average reduction in sugarcane yield by 6% in 2050 compared to the current period. Nonetheless, the impact of climate change was largely variable depending on climatic areas in the island. It was much larger at low altitudes on the West Coast (− 15%) than at high altitudes (− 4% on average). Additionally, the probability of low yields will increase even if the average was little impacted. In future research, different adaptive management scenarios will be explored to reduce the impact of climate change, particularly the change in irrigation management and harvest periods. This approach will be expanded to consider a broader view of the climate variability in the island.