Climate change will influence arable crop production in the coming decades and air pollution is already having substantial impacts on crop productivity causing yield losses of 10-15% on average across Europe for sensitive staple crops such as wheat.
What is unclear is how these stresses will combine to impact crop growth, development and yield through influences on important crop resource use efficiencies such as radiation, water and nutrient use. SUSCAP aims to develop a new generation of process based crop models to better understand the mechanisms and hence impacts of these multiple stresses. Remote sensing data shows that crop models can provide reliable estimates of crop growth development under climate change and air pollution regimes in Europe. Crop experiments and modelling show that wheat growth and yield will be impacted by both climate change and air pollution which will in turn determine the effectiveness of existing adaptation options.