Climatic Variation and the yield of Sugarcane in a Tropical sub-humid area: The case of Bacita, Nigeria

Abstract

The need for a greater understanding of the nature of the relationships between agricultural yield and climate is important in climate modeling. Earlier attempts at relating climates to yield of sugarcane have been based on data of limited time frame. In view of the recent global warming and the attendant environmental changes, it is important to evaluate the implications of such changes on agricultural variability. This study therefore examined sugarcane yield variability concomitant to climatic variation for a sub-humid station, Bacita, Nigeria. Using the principal component analysis procedure, a set of 16 climatic variables spanning 1971-2000, for a sub-humid station, Bacita, Nigeria was regrouped into five main components explaining about 86% of the total variance. These components are “Rainfall occurrence component” (26.63% of the variance), “Rainfall quality Components” (22.12%) “ Thermal component” (13.96%)”Heat Component” (11.54%) and “Atmospheric moisture component” (9.28%), respectively. It was observed that although only “Rainfall occurrence component”(26.63% of the variance) has a positive correlation coefficient with yield of sugar cane, “heat component” and “Atmospheric Moisture component” have a significant negative variation with the yield of sugarcane in the area.

JARD Vol. 2 2003: pp. 110-119