Assessing the Impact of Climate Change on Wheat Productivity in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Assessing the Impact of Climate Change on Wheat Productivity in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Sonia1, Khuram Nawaz Sadozai1*, Noor Paio Khan2, Abbas Ullah Jan1 and Gulnaz Hameed3
ABSTRACT
The central theme of this research study was to assess the impact of climate change on wheat productivity in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province, Pakistan. The nexus of wheat productivity with selected climatic variables that includes temperature, precipitation and humidity was also inquired through this research. Panel data of wheat crop’s input and aforesaid climatic variables for the period of thirty years (1985-2015) was employed to figure-out the major findings. Econometric diagnostic tests were used to verify the model stability. Therefore, LM test was encompassed to detect the serial correlation. The result of Hausman test has suggested applying “Fixed Effect Model” for further analysis. Major estimates of the overall 30 years data reveal that among non-climatic variables, area under wheat cultivation and seed are highly significant to the wheat yield at 1 percent level of significance. Whereas, contribution of fertilizer to wheat crop in KP province was observed insignificant. Furthermore, the computation of climatic variables depicts that temperature contributes significantly but has inverse association with wheat yield in KP province. This implies that surge in temperature by one Celsius degree centigrade (0C) can drop-down the wheat yield by 0.074 percent. The impact of precipitation was also observed negative with wheat crop in the panel data since 1985 to 2000. This study concludes that temperature and precipitation have inverse association with wheat production while humidity is positively associated. Overall scenario concludes that not only climatic variable but also major wheat crop’s input are significantly associated to wheat yield in the study area. This research study recommends that government and concerned policy-makers may give due attention to construct the climate change policy for climate change adaptation strategies and provide heat resistant wheat crop varieties to the farming community.
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