Journal of Horticulture
Open Access

Abstract

Impact of Climate Variability on Productivity of Selected Apple Cultivars in Gamo Highlands, Chencha District

Kebede Jobir* and Mebrat Mengistu

The study assessed the impact of climatic factors on yield of selected apple cultivars at Chencha district, located in 37°29’57” to 37°39’36” E and 6°8’55” to 6°25’30” N, Ethiopia. The data collected for this study includes, yield of selected apple cultivars BR (Bonds Red), Crispin and Granny Smith from Chencha district, observed meteorological data (Chencha, Dorze and Zigti Stations) for the last 15 years and CORDEX-Africa data outputs of HadGEM2-ES for Chencha district under representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP 8.5) scenario to make future projections in three time frame 2020's in the near; 2050's in the middle and 2080's in the long term. After assessment of data quality; Bias correction, coefficient of variation, Sen’s estimator and Mann-Kendall's statistical tests were used for trend detection. The HadGEM2-ES scenarios experiments were used for the climate projection. Hargreaves method was used to estimate current apple. The regression and correlation analyses were used to examine the impacts of climate variables on crop water use of apple using XLSTAT software. The result revealed that, the annual rainfall shows increasing trends for all stations except Chencha and the maximum and minimum temperature increased by 0.06°C and 0.02°C per annual respectively. Projection of future rainfall condition suggests that in all season, both RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 predicted an increase of precipitation (21 mm to 36 mm) and (15 mm to 31 mm) respectively for all future period. The overall analysis of the mean temperature showed an increasing trend in both scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5). It is clearly seen that maximum and minimum temperature has positive correlation with crop potential evapotranspiration (ETc) of apple. The regression analysis computed for the climate variables and yield of BR, Crispin and Granny smith have coefficient of determination 0.81, 0.65 and 0.68 respectively. The results showed that yield of BR is highly affected by climate variables compared to Crispin and Granny smith.

Published Date: 2025-03-13; Received Date: 2024-01-04