Theoretical and Applied Climatology (2022) 147:803–816

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03865-w

ORIGINAL PAPER

Climate change impacts on rainfed and irrigated soybean yield

in Brazil’s new agricultural frontier
Rafael Dreux Miranda Fernandes1 · Diego Magalhães de Melo1 · Elvis Felipe Elli2 · Rafael Battisti3

Received: 12 May 2021 / Accepted: 11 November 2021 / Published online: 19 November 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
Climate is one of the main limiting factors for agricultural productivity, where climate change may increase the risk for
food production. Based on that, the aim of this study was to evaluate the impacts of climate change on rainfed and irrigated
soybean yield in the MATOPIBA region, the new agricultural frontier in Brazil. The DSSAT CSM-CROPGRO-Soybean was
used to simulate rainfed and irrigated yield using local soils, sowing dates, and maturity groups. The simulations included
the baseline (1980–2010), and two future scenarios (2011–2040 and 2041–2070) for two representative concentration path-
ways (RCP 2.6 and 8.5). The future climate scenarios were obtained from global climate models (HadGEM2-ES and CSIRO
mk3-6–0). The baseline showed a median yield of 3907 kg ­ha−1 across the region, a value that increased to 4006 kg ­ha−1 in
the RCP 8.5 in 2011–2040. For the 2041–2070 period, RCPs 2.6 and 8.5 had a yield reduction to 3686 and 2388 kg ­ha−1,
respectively. The average yield reduction was higher than 23% under RCP 8.5 (2041–2070), reaching more than 53% in some
areas. The yield impact in future climate scenarios was related to rainfall reduction by 300–400 mm c­ ycle−1, and tempera-
ture increased above 3 °C. The irrigation showed potential to offset negative climate change impacts, where yield gain was
2400 kg ­ha−1 under RCP 8.5. The future climate impact can be reduced by moving soybean crops preferentially to areas of
higher altitude, with lower air temperature associated with irrigation. Further studies could explore potential adaptations
related with physiological traits and crop management.

1 Introduction (Battisti and Sentelhas, 2019). Santos et al. (2021b) reported

Brazil’s new agricultural frontier is defined as the
MATOPIBA region, located in northeastern Brazil, which is
mostly composed of Cerrado biomes (Santos et al., 2021a).
The region represented 12% of the soybean production in
the country with a growing area around of 4.5 million ha in
the 2019/2020 growing season, representing an increase of
95% and 350%, when compared to the area in 2010/11 and
2000/01 growing seasons, respectively (CONAB, 2020). The
region had most of the area divided into 3 climate homoge-
neous regions for soybean production, where water deficit
was responsible for 24 to 81% of photosynthesis restriction
* Rafael Battisti
battisti@ufg.br
1
Center for Water and Soil Engineering, Universidade Federal
Do Recôncavo da Bahia, Cruz das Almas, BA, Brazil
2
Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Agronomy
Hall, Ames, IA, USA
3
Escola de Agronomia, Universidade Federal de Goiás,
Goiânia, GO, Brazil
soybean yield losses from 26 to 54% due to water deficit for
sites located in the MATOPIBA.
The current climate variability is influenced by the El
Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and by the interhemi-
spheric sea surface temperature gradient in the Tropical
Atlantic (Reis et al., 2020), which can lead to limited soy-
bean yield in the region. Significant trends of increase in
maximum and minimum temperature were reported for the
period from 1970 to 2010 in the MATOPIBA (Salvador and
Brito, 2018). In the last decades, global warming has been
listed as an important factor to be considered regarding agri-
cultural production. Ainsworth and Long (2021) reported
that ­C3 crops can increase yield by 18% under non-stress
conditions with an increase of 200 ppm in C ­ O2 concentra-
tion, but this can be limited to 10% if temperature incre-
ment of 2 °C. Higher air temperature associated with water
deficit can limit yield production in the region, even with
the positive effect of ­CO2 increase for C
­ 3 crops (Ainsworth
and Long, 2021).
Studies on future climate projections have indicated
that soybean yield could increase between 1.1 and 32%

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for middle century in MATOPIBA (da Silva et al., 2020,
2021). However, these studies considered less than five sites
to represent the region, considering the areas with higher
current production for the simulations. This requires further
efforts to cover the entire region and identify potential areas
of expansion in the future with lower climate risk. Further,
alternative crop management strategies were not evaluated.
In the present study, irrigation can help reducing the future
climate risk. For example, da Silva et al. (2021) reported that
west of Bahia state had an increased yield risk under future
climates (between 10 and 15%), a region with intense use of
irrigation for grain production.
The impacts and uncertainties of climate change on crop
production can be measured using future climate scenarios
(Asseng et al., 2013; Battisti et al., 2018a). The future cli-
mate scenarios can help to identify potential areas for pro-
duction (Lu et al., 2021), physiological traits (Battisti et al.
2017a), and crop management (Liu and Dai, 2020) to miti-
gate climate change impacts over the crops. In Brazil, studies
involving climate change and soybean suggested impacts
for most soybean production regions (Do Rio et al., 2016;
Battisti et al., 2017a; Hampf et al., 2020; Zilli et al., 2020),
but with a limitation for MATOPIBA (Pires et al., 2016;
da Silva et al., 2020, 2021). In relation to these study, our
study improved the simulations, including thin resolution of
weather data (108 points), general crop management, three
maturity groups, two sowing dates and three soil types,
applied to a crop simulation model properly calibrated for
the region (Teixeira et al., 2019; Sampaio et al., 2021). In
this context, improving knowledge regarding the impact of
climate change on soybean productivity in this region is
needed, adding the irrigated management as future alterna-
tive in areas with higher climate risk.
Therefore, the hypothesis of the present study is that cli-
mate change will affect rainfed soybean yield negatively in
the MATOPIBA region, but irrigation management can help
to reduce yield loss and variability associated with climate
change scenarios. This study aimed to evaluate the impacts
of climate change on the rainfed and irrigated soybean yield
using the crop model CSM-CROPGRO-Soybean, previously
calibrated for the MATOPIBA region, Brazil.
2 Material and methods
2.1 Study region
The studied region (MATOPIBA) included the south
and northeast of Maranhão state, Tocantins state, west
of Bahia state, and south-west of the Piauí state (Fig. 1).
The MATOPIBA region is located between longitudes 50°
44′ West and 41° 48′ West and between latitudes 15° 16′
South and 2° 15′ South. The region has an area of around
13
R. D. M. Fernandes et al.
73.2 M ha, with altitude ranging from 0 to 1,254 m above
sea level, and 91% of its area is classified as Cerrado biome
(with small areas of Amazon and Caatinga biomes). The
climate classification is Aw, following the Köppen classifica-
tion (Alvares et al., 2013), characterized as a tropical climate
with dry winter.
2.2 Baseline climate database
The baseline climate database was obtained from Xavier
et al. (2016), from 1980 to 2010. These included daily mini-
mum and maximum air temperature (°C), rainfall (mm) and
accumulated solar radiation (MJ ­m−2 ­d−1). The weather data
were obtained in a grid resolution of 0.75° × 0.75°, which
represents approximately 83.25 × 83.25 km, totalizing 108
points in the region. Battisti et al. (2019) validated the grid-
ded weather database for simulating soybean growth and
development processes, comparing results between gridded
weather data and surface weather station.
2.3 Future climate scenarios
The future climate scenarios were obtained from AgMIP
Climate Scenario Generation Tools with R (ACSGTR) ver-
sion 2.3, developed by Hudson and Ruane (2015), in which
a delta value was applied to the baseline data obtained from
Xavier et al. (2016), including daily weather data for mini-
mum and maximum air temperature (°C) and rainfall (mm).
The climate general circulation models (GCMs) used
were HadGEM2-ES (Jones et al., 2011; Collins et al., 2011),
and CSIRO mk3-6–0 (Collier et al., 2007, 2011). These
GCMs are available from Coupled Model Intercomparison
Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) and were selected because (i) both
are reliable to use with the optimist (RCP 2.6) and pessimist
(RCP 8.5) scenarios; (ii) HadGEM2-ES is focused on Earth
Systems developed by the European Research Center; and
(iii) CSIRO mk3-6–0 from the Australian Research Center,
presenting a greater focus on the southern hemisphere.
Two periods were selected to generate future yield projec-
tion: the short (2011–2040) and the midterm (2041–2070).
The delta was simulated for weather conditions by the
GCMs and periods considering RCPs 2.6 (optimistic) and
8.5 (pessimistic). The atmospheric ­CO2 concentrations were
450 and 500 ppm, respectively, for RCPs 2.6 and 8.5 in the
short term, and 480 and 600 ppm, respectively, for RCPs 2.6
and 8.5 in the midterm. The atmospheric ­CO2 concentrations
were obtained from the 2014 IPCC report (IPCC, 2014).
2.4 Crop yield simulation
The CSM-CROPGRO-Soybean, embedded within the Deci-
sion Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT)
version 4.7.0 (Hoogenboom et al., 2017), was used to carry
Climate change impacts on rainfed and irrigated soybean yield in Brazil’s new agricultural…
Fig. 1  Location of the MATOPIBA region in Brazil (upper right
map), and main cities in the region and mean soybean production
intensity from 2014/15 to 2018/19 growing seasons by county in the
out the soybean growth and yield simulations under different
climate scenarios. The simulations were performed using
the seasonal mode with the initial condition being restarting
every growing season. The simulations were implemented
by turning off modules of phosphorus, potassium, chemicals,
diseases, and tillage, and turning on the modules regarding
nitrogen, symbiosis, and automatic irrigation (for irrigated
treatment) in the CSM-CROPGRO-Soybean. Two sowing
dates were used to represent the main management in the
region: i.e., October 15th (day of year 288) and November
15th (day of year 319). In addition to that, three soil types
were used, including sandy-loam, sandy-clay, and clay, with
data obtained from Battisti and Sentelhas (2017) (Table 1).
Three maturity groups were considered for simulations
based on the adaptation across the region (Alliprandini
et al., 2009). The maturity groups were 7.2 (MG7200) for
latitude below or equal to 12.5° South, 7.7 (MG7700) for
latitude between 12.5° and 7.5° South, and 8.8 (MG8800)
for latitude above 7.5° South. The cultivars’ parameters were
obtained from Teixeira et al. (2019) for MG 7.2 (MG7200)
805
region (left map). The production intensity is the soybean growing
area in the county divided by the total area of the county, adapted
from IBGE (2021)
and from Sampaio et al. (2021) for MG 7.7 (MG77PA) e 8.8
(MG8800) (Table 2). These authors obtained a good crop
model performance during calibration and evaluation for
phenology and crop growth. Teixeira et al. (2019) obtained
root mean square error (RMSE) of 347 and 567 kg ­ha−1, and
Willmott index (d) of 0.96 and 0.81, respectively for calibra-
tion and evaluation for soybean grain yield, while maturity
date had RMSE of 6.9 days and d of 0.70. Sampaio et al.
(2021) had RMSE lower than 401 kg ­ha−1 for soybean grain
yield and a bias lower than 7 days for maturity date.
The yield was simulated considering two water manage-
ments, i.e. rainfed and irrigated. The rainfed management
used natural rainfall amount and distribution as the only
source for the soil water balance. Irrigation management
was created using the automatic irrigation from CSM-
CROPGRO-Soybean based on a fixed irrigation amount
of 10 mm ­day−1. The irrigation was applied when soil
water content dropped below 60% of the relative difference
between drainage upper limit and lower limit for the soil
layer between 0 and 0.30 m.
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806 R. D. M. Fernandes et al.

Table 1  Soil parameters used to Depth LL DUL SAT Ksat BD LOC SRGF
build the soil file in the CSM-
CROPGRO-Soybean in the cm 3
cm ­cm −3
mm ­h −1
mg ­m −3
% –
DSSAT platform
Sandy soil
5 0.07 0.13 0.39 2.59 1.55 0.89 1.00
15 0.07 0.13 0.39 2.59 1.55 0.89 1.00
30 0.07 0.13 0.39 2.59 1.55 0.89 0.42
40 0.07 0.13 0.39 2.59 1.69 0.10 0.34
60 0.07 0.13 0.39 2.59 1.69 0.10 0.20
100 0.07 0.13 0.39 2.59 1.69 0.10 0.16
150 0.07 0.13 0.39 2.59 1.69 0.10 0.04
Loamy soil
5 0.16 0.26 0.44 0.12 1.4 1.30 1.00
15 0.16 0.26 0.44 0.12 1.4 1.30 1.00
30 0.16 0.26 0.44 0.12 1.4 1.30 0.42
40 0.16 0.26 0.34 0.12 1.56 0.20 0.34
60 0.16 0.26 0.34 0.12 1.56 0.20 0.20
100 0.16 0.26 0.34 0.12 1.56 0.20 0.16
150 0.16 0.26 0.34 0.12 1.56 0.20 0.04
Clay soil
5 0.22 0.34 0.53 0.06 1.16 1.67 1.00
15 0.22 0.34 0.53 0.06 1.16 1.67 1.00
30 0.22 0.34 0.51 0.06 1.22 1.00 0.42
40 0.22 0.34 0.48 0.06 1.30 0.20 0.34
60 0.22 0.34 0.48 0.06 1.30 0.20 0.20
100 0.22 0.34 0.48 0.06 1.30 0.20 0.16
150 0.22 0.34 0.48 0.06 1.30 0.20 0.04

SAT, soil water saturation; DUL, drainage upper limit; LL, lower limit; K­ sat, saturated soil hydraulic con-
ductivity; BD, soil bulk density; LOC, organic carbon; SRGF, soil root growth factor.

2.5 Data analysis 3 Results

The results were analyzed based on the mean and median
yield across crop management (sowing dates, soil types,
and cultivars) and climate from general circulation models
for rainfed and irrigated by gridded weather point. The
coefficient of variation was calculated for each climate
scenarios considering the results across growing seasons,
crop management and gridded weather points. The differ-
ence between future and baseline climates scenarios were
obtained for rainfall, maximum and minimum air tempera-
ture, actual crop evapotranspiration (ETa), rainfed yield,
and between rainfed and irrigated yield for future climate
scenario. The difference between irrigation and rainfed
yield was used to evaluate the potential of irrigation man-
agement under future climates, including the total water
demand for irrigation. The mean and differences results
were shown in maps with grid cells filled with the result
obtained for each simulated point. The maps were built
using the R software (R Core Team, 2018; packages: ras-
ter, sf, ggplot, ggpubr, and RColorBrewer).
3.1 Climate in baseline and future scenarios
The rainfall accumulated during the soybean cycle ranged
from 400 to 1100 mm ­cycle−1 for the baseline (Fig. 2a),
where the west border presented the higher values, while
the eastern border the lower ones. A rainfall reduction was
observed from central to south region, while in north region
an increase was obtained in 2011–2040 for both RCP 2.6 and
8.5 (Fig. 2b and 2e). The period 2041–2070 presented rain-
fall reductions for both scenarios (RCP 2.6 and 8.5) (Fig. 2c
and 2f) across almost the entire region, with values reach-
ing − 400 mm for RCP 8.5 (Fig. 2f). In the extreme-north
region, an increase of rainfall was observed under all future
scenarios (Fig. 2b, 2c, 2e, and 2f).
The future climate scenarios showed a rainfall reduction
considering the median value across the region and growing
seasons (Fig. 2d). The baseline had a median of 763 mm
­cycle−1, which decreased to 647 and 644 mm c­ ycle−1 in
2011–2040, respectively, for RCP 2.6 and 8.5, and to 662

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Climate change impacts on rainfed and irrigated soybean yield in Brazil’s new agricultural… 807

Table 2  Soybean cultivars’ parameters used in CSM-CROPGRO-Soybean for soybean growth simulation in the MATOPIBA regions
Trait Coefficient definition MG72002 MG77PA3 MG88003

CSDL Critical short day length below which reproductive development progresses with no daylength 12.10 11.80 11.50
effect (for short day plants) (h)
PPSEN Slope of the relative response of development to photoperiod with time (positive for short day 0.345 0.325 0.340
plants) (1/h)
EM-FL Time between plant emergence and flower appearance (R1) ­(PTD1) 25.0 25.0 24.5
FL-SH Time between first flower and first pod (R3) (PTD) 5.5 5.0 8.2
FL-SD Time between first flower and first seed (R5) (PTD) 10.0 10.5 12.0
SD-PM Time between first seed (R5) and physiological maturity (R7) (PTD) 27.0 27.5 25.0
FL-LF Time between first flower (R1) and end of leaf expansion (PTD) 20.0 22.0 18.0
LFMAX Maximum leaf photosynthesis rate at 30 °C, 350 vpm ­CO2, and high light (mg CO2 ­m−2 ­s−1) 1.030 1.200 1.175
SLAVR Specific leaf area of cultivar under standard growth conditions ­(cm2 ­g−1) 340 365 388
SIZELF Maximum size of full leaf (three leaflets) ­(cm2) 180 230 216
XFRT Maximum fraction of daily growth that is partitioned to seed-shell 1.0 1.0 1.0
WTPSD Maximum weight per seed (g) 0.210 0.150 0.160
SFDUR Seed filling duration for pod cohort at standard growth conditions (PTD) 23.0 18.2 25.0
SDPDV Average seed per pod under standard growing conditions (no. ­pod−1) 2.30 2.00 2.06
PODUR Time required for cultivar to reach final pod load under optimal conditions (PTD) 12 10 10
THRSH Threshing percentage, the maximum ratio of (seed/(seed + shell)) at maturity 74.0 76.0 78.0
SDPRO Fraction protein in seeds (g(protein)/g(seed)) 0.400 0.400 0.400
SDLIP Fraction oil in seeds (g(oil)/g(seed)) 0.200 0.200 0.200
1
PTD, photothermal days; 2Teixeira et al. (2019); 3Sampaio et al. (2021).

and 535 mm c­ ycle−1 in 2041–2070, respectively, for RCP
2.6 and 8.5 (Fig. 2d). The RCP 8.5, 2041–2070, presented
a rainfall reduction of 26% in comparison to the baseline,
while rainfall for RCP 2.6 decreased by 18% in the same
period (Supplementary Material Table S1). Future scenarios
had greater coefficient of variation (more than 40%), while
baseline had a lower value (30%) for accumulated rainfall in
the crop cycle (Supplementary Material Table S1).
The minimum and maximum air temperature showed,
respectively, a median value of 21.7 and 31.5 °C in the
baseline scenario (Fig. 3d and 3j). The southeast region
experienced the lower air temperature, with the minimum
air temperature ranging from 18 to 21 °C (Fig. 3a), and
the maximum air temperature ranging from 28 to 32 °C
(Fig. 3g). The highest values were obtained in the north-
east and the west border, with minimum and maximum air
temperature above 22 °C and 32 °C, respectively. The RCP
2.6 presented lower increases than RCP 8.5, with a median
of 22.6 and 22.8 °C for minimum temperature and 32.5 and
32.7 °C for maximum temperature, considering the periods
of 2011–2040 and 2041–2070, respectively (Fig. 3d and 3j).
However, the RCP 8.5 showed a difference above 1.5 °C
between the two periods.
The minimum air temperature had an increase between
1 and 2 °C under RCP 2.6 in 2011–2040 and 2041–2070,
and RCP 8.5 in 2011–2040 for most of the region (Fig. 3b,
3c, and 3e), while RCP 8.5 had higher increases (3 to 4 °C)
in 2041–2070 (Fig. 3f). The maximum air temperature
showed an increase of 1–2 °C under both RCP 2.6 and
8.5 in the 2011–2040 period (Fig. 3h and 3k). However,
the south region presented an increase of 2–3 °C, and
the north region, 1–2 °C for 2041–2070 under RCP 2.6
(Fig. 3i). The RCP 8.5 had an increase between 3 and 4 °C
for most of the region in 2041–2070, with exception to the
north region, where the increase was limited to 2–3 °C
(Fig. 3l).
The actual crop evapotranspiration (ETa) ranged from
300 to 331 mm ­cycle−1 for the baseline in the northeast
region, with higher evapotranspiration (489–520 mm
­cycle−1) found in the southwest (Fig. 4a). The future cli-
mate scenarios presented median reductions in ETa with
increased variability across growing seasons in the region
for both future scenarios (Fig. 4d), where the median ETa
for baseline was 453 mm ­cycle−1, and in the worst scenario
(RCP 8.5—2041–2070), it was reduced to 400 mm ­cycle−1.
The ETa difference between future climates and base-
line showed a similar pattern in 2011–2040 for RCP 2.6 and
8.5, and in 2041–2070 for RCP 2.6, where the ETa change
from − 30 to + 30 mm ­cycle−1 for the MATOPIBA (Fig. 4b,
4c, and 4e). On the other hand, the RCP 8.5 for period
2041–2070 had small changes (− 30 to 30 mm ­cycle−1) in
the northeast region and portion of Tocantins states (TO),
while from southeast to northwest region, the changes
ranged from − 90 to − 30 mm ­cycle−1 (Fig. 4f).

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808
Fig. 2  Rainfall accumulated during soybean cycle for baseline (a),
the difference between baseline and future climate scenarios for
RCP 2.6 (b and c) and RCP 8.5 (e and f) in 2011–2040 (b and e) and
2041–2070 (c and f), and the rainfall amount accumulated during
soybean cycle across the crop growing seasons and weather points in
the region (d). The soybean cycle considered the period from sowing
3.2 Soybean yield impacts
Higher rainfed yield values were obtained in the center to
west region under baseline conditions, with a mean yield
above 3400 kg ­ha−1 (Fig. 5a). The east border and north-
east experienced values below 2400 kg ­ha−1, with specific
points having values below 1400 kg ­ha−1. The rainfed yield
showed a median of 3907 kg ­ha−1 for baseline conditions
across growing seasons, crop management and gridded
weather points (Fig. 5d). The RCP 8.5 had a median higher
than baseline values for the period 2011–2040, reaching
4006 kg ­ha−1 (Fig. 5d), while RCP 2.6 presented a yield
value of 3812 kg ­ha−1. In the period 2041–2070, for both
RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 yield reductions occurred, with a
median of 3686 and 2388 kg ­ha−1, respectively (Fig. 5d).
The period 2011–2040 resulted in a lower yield changes,
between − 8 and + 7%, for RCP 2.6 (Fig. 5b) and 8.5
(Fig. 5e) for most of the region. The exceptions were the
13
R. D. M. Fernandes et al.
to physiological maturity (around 120 days). In figure d, letters A, B,
C, E, and F in x-axis represent the scenarios, respectively, of base-
line, RCP 2.6 2011–2040, RCP 2.6 2041–2070, RCP 8.5 2011–2040,
and RCP 8.5 2041–2070. In the boxplot, the central line is the median
(50%), the box extremes are the percentiles 25 and 75%, the end of
lines means 5–95%, and dots are outliers
southeast that presented a yield reduction between 8 and
23% for RCP 2.6, and the northeast that experienced yield
increases between 7 and 22% for RCP 8.5. However, RCP
2.6 resulted higher decreases (− 8 to − 23%) during the
period 2041–2070, with exception of part of Tocantins state
(TO) and west border for Bahia state (BA) (Fig. 5c). Simi-
larly, RCP 8.5 had yield reductions above 23% in most of
region, with Piauí state (PI) having yield reductions above
53% in 2041–2070 (Fig. 5f).
3.3 Potential of irrigation to reduce climate risk
The use of irrigation increased yield, with a yield gain of
up to 2880 kg ­ha−1 (Fig. 6a, 6b, 6e, and 6f). The yield gain
showed a similar pattern under RCP 2.6 in both periods and
RCP 8.5 in the 2011–2040 period. The gains were between
0 and 480 kg ­ha−1 from the center to the west border, while
in the southeast, gains above 1440 kg ­ha−1 were observed
Climate change impacts on rainfed and irrigated soybean yield in Brazil’s new agricultural…
(Fig. 6a, 6b, and 6e). In the RCP 8.5 for 2041–2070, we
observed an increase in the yield gain for most of the region,
with values from center to southeast border being above
1920 kg ­ha−1 (Fig. 6f).
The yield gain using irrigation was correlated with the
total amount of water required for irrigation (Fig. 6c, 6d,
6g, and 6h). The irrigation amount ranged from 0 to 288 mm
­cycle−1. The Tocantins state presented water demand lower
than 96 mm c­ ycle−1 under all scenarios, while the other areas
showed higher demand. The higher demand occurred in the
east border, between 240 and 288 mm ­cycle−1, under RCP
8.5 for the 2041–2070 period (Fig. 6h). The RCP 2.6 showed
an increase in demand from 2011–2040 to 2041–2070,
mainly in areas located in the center (0–48 mm ­cycle−1) to
east portion (144–192 mm cycle) (Fig. 6c and 6d).
The use of irrigation demonstrated positive results for
all scenarios, even for baseline conditions, where yield
increased from 3540 to 4244 kg ­h a −1 (Supplementary
Material—Table S1). The most positive results occurred
under RCP 2.6 for both periods and RCP 8.5 for the period
2041–2070, where the yield reached values observed in the
baseline conditions. The RCP 2.6 experienced yield values
of 4230 and 4036 kg ­ha−1 for the 2011–2040 and 2041–2070
periods, respectively. The RCP 8.5 showed a higher yield
than that found under baseline condition for the 2011–2040
period, reaching a mean of 4443 kg ­ha−1 (Supplementary
Material—Table S1). In 2041–2070, RCP 8.5 reduced the
irrigated yield to 3681 kg ­ha−1, but this was 57% higher
than rainfed yield (2343 kg ­ha−1) (Supplementary Mate-
rial—Table S1). The scenarios and period defined the total
irrigation demand, where RCP 8.5 in 2041–2070 presented
a mean demand of 135 mm c­ ycle−1 ranging from 60 to
190 mm ­cycle−1 considering the percentiles 25 and 75 (Sup-
plementary Material—Table S1).
4 Discussion
The soybean yield is highly dependent on weather condi-
tions, where the baseline and climate change in the future
scenarios define the crop yield tendency (Battisti et al.,
2017a; Bhattarai et al., 2017). The MATOPIBA has the
most of its area located in the Cerrado biome, with an Aw
climate type (tropical zone with dry winter) (Alvares et al.,
2013). However, the east border is a transition to As (tropi-
cal zone with dry summer) and BSh (dry zone semi-arid the
low latitude and altitude), and the west border to Am (tropi-
cal zone with monsoon). This created a rainfall pattern that
defined the yield for baseline conditions and the impacts of
future climates in the region. For example, in the east border,
the baseline rainfall was lower than 600 mm ­cycle−1 and
yield between 1400 and 2400 kg ­ha−1, while in the west,
it reached more than 1000 mm c­ ycle−1 and yield between
809
3400 and 4400 kg ­ha−1 (Figs. 1a and 5a). Da Silva et al.
(2021) observed a similar pattern, with east border showing
an increase of yield risk (growing seasons with yield below
average), between 10 and 15% for future climate scenarios
in 2050, when compared to the current condition, while west
border had a reduction in the yield risk from 0 to 10%.
The rainfall was higher than 500 mm during the soy-
bean cycle in most of the region, which is an amount that
can provide satisfactory soybean yield levels (Zanon et al.,
2016; Madias et al., 2021). However, the rainfall distribution
along the cycle can affect soybean yield in each growing
season, where Battisti and Sentelhas (2019) verified vari-
ability in the relative water stress index between 12 and 88%
due to water deficit in the region. The scenarios indicated
higher water deficit levels for the period of 2041–2070. The
RCP 2.6 had most of the region reducing yield between − 8
and − 23%, associated with a reduction of more than 200 mm
in the rainfall during the soybean cycle. Zanon et al. (2016)
observed a similar yield reduction (− 16%) when considered
a rainfall reduction from 550 to 450 mm ­cycle−1.
The yield decreased more than 23% under RCP 8.5 for the
2041–2070 period, especially in the areas of Bahia, Piauí,
and Maranhão state. In these areas, the rainfall amount was
lower than other parts of the MATOPIBA, but yield losses
were minimized by lower air temperature under baseline
conditions. The minimum and maximum temperatures under
baseline were below 20 °C and 31 °C, respectively. These
values are within the optimal range for soybean growth (Vu
et al., 2001; Alsajri et al., 2020), which reduced impacts
of water deficit by the lower water demand (Jumrani and
Bhatia, 2018; 2019). However, the future climate projec-
tions indicate reduced rainfall and increased air temperature,
potentiating yield losses in relation to the baseline under
RCP 8.5 in 2041–2070. Bhattarai et al. (2017) verified that
future projections for soybean yield in the US Corn Belt
remained similar across RCPs until the middle of the cen-
tury; however, at the end of the century, the yields diverged
across RCPs. Further, da Silva et al. (2020) observed that
climate models led to different rainfall amounts and yield
tendencies under future climates, with MIROC5 model hav-
ing more rainy days in MATOPIBA than HadGEM2-ES,
leading from 12 (RCP 4.5) to 15% (RCP 8.5) higher yield
when use MIROC5 for the middle century.
The yield tendency observed in our study, from + 22
to − 68%, differs for most of area when compared with oth-
ers studies for the region. Da Silva et al. (2020) reported
yield gains between 24 and 32% and da Silva et al. (2021)
reported yield gains from 1.1 to 15.9%, considering RCPs
4.5 and 8.5 for the middle century. This occurred even the
authors reporting increase in air temperature and reduction
of rainfall, which can lead to yield reductions (Battisti et al.,
2018a). These differences are related with uncertainties aris-
ing from this type of study (Asseng et al., 2013), as crop
13
810 R. D. M. Fernandes et al.

13
 Climate change impacts on rainfed and irrigated soybean yield in Brazil’s new agricultural…
◂Fig. 3  Mean minimum (a) and maximum (g) air temperature during
soybean cycle for baseline (a and g), the difference between baseline
and future climate scenarios for RCP 2.6 (b, c, h, and i) and RCP 8.5
(e, f, k, and l) in the 2011–2040 (b, e, h, and k) and 2041–2070 (c, f,
i, and l) period for the mean minimum (b, c, e, and f) and maximum
(h, I, k, and l) air temperature, and minimum (d) and maximum (j)
air temperature during soybean cycle across growing seasons and the
weather points in the region. The soybean cycle considered the period
from sowing to physiological maturity, with around 120 days. In fig-
ure d, the letters A, B, C, E, and F, and in figure j the letters G, H, I,
K, and L, represent the scenarios, respectively, of baseline, RCP 2.6
2011–2040, RCP 2.6 2041–2070, RCP 8.5 2011–2040, and RCP 8.5
2041–2070. In the boxplot (d and j), the central line is the median
(50%), the box extremes are the percentiles 25 and 75%, end of lines
means 5–95%, and dots are outliers
model calibration, weather data, soil types, maturity groups,
spatial and temporal resolution (Battisti et al., 2017b).
Fig. 4  Accumulated actual crop evapotranspiration during soybean
cycle for baseline (a), the difference between baseline and future cli-
mate scenarios for RCP 2.6 (b and c) and RCP 8.5 (e and f) in the
2011–2040 (b and e) and 2041–2070 (c and f) period, and the actual
crop evapotranspiration accumulated during soybean cycle across
growing seasons and the weather points in the region (d). The soy-
bean cycle considered the period from sowing to physiological matu-
811
The areas located in the Tocantins state (TO) and in
the west border of Bahia state showed the lower impacts
on yield in the 2011–2040 period for both RCPs, and
in 2041–2070 for RCP 2.6. The areas showed yield
changes between − 8 and + 7%. The rainfall had a change
between − 100 and 0 mm ­cycle−1, where the lower impact
is associated with a higher rainfall amount in the base-
line conditions, addressing the demand for high yield
even under future climate scenarios (Zanon et al., 2016).
Further, temperature increased less than 2 °C, which kept
soybean under an optimal condition (Jumrani and Bhatia,
2018; 2019), mainly for high altitude areas in the west of
Bahia state, which have lower air temperature for baseline.
The interaction between rainfall and temperature limited
ETa changes between − 30 and + 30 mm for the 2011–2040
period.
rity, with around 120 days. In figure d, the letters A, B, C, E, and F
represent the scenarios, respectively, of baseline, RCP 2.6 2011–
2040, RCP 2.6 2041–2070, RCP 8.5 2011–2040, and RCP 8.5 2041–
2070. In the boxplot (d), the central line is the median (50%), the box
extremes are the percentiles 25 and 75%, end of lines means 5–95%,
and dots are outliers
13
812
Fig. 5  Rainfed soybean yield for baseline (a), the difference between
rainfed yield simulated for baseline and future climate scenarios for
RCP 2.6 (b and c) and RCP 8.5 (e and f) in the 2011–2040 (b and e)
and 2041–2070 (c and f) period, and the rainfed soybean yield across
growing seasons and weather points the region (d). In figure d, the
Water deficit and rising temperatures are weather limi-
tations that simultaneously occur in the field. Jumrani and
Bhatia (2018) applied four temperature levels (day/night)
in vegetative and reproductive period for soybean: 26 °C
(30/22), 29 °C (34/24), 32 °C (38/26), and 35 °C (42/28 °C),
which were combined with a water deficit event. The authors
observed a yield reduction of 66% when temperature was
increased from 26 °C (30/22) to 35 °C (42/28) for unstressed
plants. However, water deficit imposed in vegetative and
reproductive period leads a yield reduction of 31%, 38%,
19%, and 10%, and 68%, 75%, 76%, and 79% for a tempera-
ture level of 26 °C (30/22), 29 °C (34/24), 32 °C (38/26), and
35 °C (42/28 °C), respectively, in comparison to unstressed
plants at same temperature level. This demonstrated that lim-
iting temperature and water deficit associated could lead to
high yield losses under future climate scenarios, as observed
for MATOPIBA region.
13
R. D. M. Fernandes et al.
letters A, B, C, E, and F represent the scenarios, respectively, of base-
line, RCP 2.6 2011–2040, RCP 2.6 2041–2070, RCP 8.5 2011–2040,
and RCP 8.5 2041–2070. In the boxplot (d), the central line is the
median (50%), the box extremes are the percentiles 25 and 75%, end
of lines means 5–95%, and dots are outliers
The northeast region of MATOPIBA experienced a dif-
ferent pattern for rainfed yield under future climate projec-
tions. The area is located in the Atlantic Ocean coast, where
the moisture transportation is associated with low winds in
the region, affecting the rainfall patterns (Durán-Quesada
et al., 2012). The area presented an increase in rainfall
amounts under all future climate scenarios. However, yield
increase occurred only for the period of 2011–2040. In the
period 2041–2070, the yield reduced between − 8 and − 23%.
The increase of rainfall did not result in yield gains for the
2041–2070 period because the warmer temperature in the
region is higher than optimum for soybean for baseline
(Jumrani and Bhatia, 2018; 2019). The baseline had ranged
from 22 to 24 °C, and 31 and 33 °C, for minimum and max-
imum air temperature, respectively. These values, associ-
ated with an increase in air temperature, from 0 to 2 °C in
2011–2040, and from 1 to 3 °C in 2041–2070, did not result
Climate change impacts on rainfed and irrigated soybean yield in Brazil’s new agricultural… 813

Fig. 6  Yield gain by using irrigation in the future scenarios (a, b, e, and f) and irrigation amount during soybean cycle (c, d, g, and h) for RCP
2.6 (a, b, c, and d) and 8.5 (e, f, g, and h) in the 2011–2040 (a, e, c, and g) and 2041–2070 (b, f, d, and h) period

in yield increase even with increased water availability and
positive effects of increased ­CO2 concentration.
The higher temperature resulted in a higher vapor pres-
sure deficit that leads the plant to lose water, reducing leaf
water potential and stomatal conductance (Jumrani and Bha-
tia, 2018, 2019). Jumrani and Bhatia (2018) observed that
leaf water potential declined faster at high temperatures due
to water deficit. The authors observed that soybean culti-
vars took 6, 5, 5 and 4 days to reach leaf water potential
of − 2.5 MPa at mean air temperatures of 26 °C, 29 °C,
32 °C, and 35 °C, respectively, associated with water deficit
during the reproductive period. This indicated a reduction of
transpiration at higher temperatures, which lead the plant to
close stomatal and reduce photosynthesis rate. The selection
of adapted cultivars is an option for limited climate con-
ditions, where it is possible to identify the better stomatal
control for the climate pattern, as proposed by Battisti et al.
(2017a). These authors verified that cultivars with closure
stomatal under higher vapor pressure deficit showed yield
gain reaching 225 kg ­ha−1 for the future climate in areas
with higher water deficit and temperature in Southern Brazil.
The ­C O 2 increase has been reported as a positive
effect over ­C3 crops, but yield increases only occur under
well-watered conditions (Ainsworth and Long 2021) and
not limiting conditions for temperature (Baker et al.,
1989). Future climate scenarios are expected to increase
the rainfall intensity (Almagro et al., 2017), water losses
by runoff (Burt et al., 2016) and the erodibility risk,
which was classified as moderate for Ferralsols and
Leptosols in the MATOPIBA for baseline conditions
(da Silva et al., 2019). In these scenarios, the water can
be used for irrigation, a potential management tool to
improve crop yield and reduce climate change impacts
(Battisti et al., 2018a). Previous studies for MATOPIBA
did not evaluate irrigation as an alternative management
to reduce climate risk under future climates (da Silva
et al., 2020, 2021). Irrigation management can be used to
reduce the agricultural production risk (Woznicki et al.,
2015; Justino et al., 2019), mainly in the future period
2041–2070 under both RCP 2.6 (optimistic) and 8.5 (pes-
simist) in current and new growing areas, as east bor-
der and region of lower altitude, both with low growing

13
814
intensity. Further, management strategies can be explored
to offset the negative impacts of climate change, includ-
ing the interaction of sowing dates, maturity groups
and plant densities (Choi et al., 2016; Sampaio et al.,
2021), improvement of soil management to increase root
depth to access soil water (Battisti and Sentelhas, 2017),
changes in crops and production systems (Labeyrie et al.,
2021), and reducing yield gaps by sub-optimal manage-
ment in favorable climate growing seasons (Battisti et al.,
2018b; Santos et al., 2021b).
5 Conclusions
The future climate scenarios indicated lower changes in
the yield in 2011–2040 for the MOTAPIBA compared to
the baseline. However, for the period 2041–2070, more
pronounced yield decreases were projected, especially
under the RCP 8.5. The reduction in rainfall was found
to be the main limiting weather constraint for the most
of region, leading to actual evapotranspiration reduction,
which limited soybean yield under future climate scenar-
ios. The air temperature showed values near the optimal
condition for soybean under baseline conditions, but under
future scenarios, especially RCP 8.5 in 2041–2070, this
weather variable is expected to be a limiting factor. A
promising strategy would be to grow soybean crop prefer-
entially in areas of higher altitude, with mild air tempera-
tures. Furthermore, the use of irrigation showed a greater
potential to improve soybean yield in the areas with more
pessimistic future climate conditions. In this context, fur-
ther studies could explore potential adaptation strategies
related to the development of adapted cultivars for higher
air temperature, evaluation of best sowing dates, and cul-
tivar cycles to avoid water deficit and high air temperature
effects.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplemen-
tary material available at https://d​ oi.o​ rg/1​ 0.1​ 007/s​ 00704-0​ 21-0​ 3865-w.
Funding Support for the fourth author from the National Council for
Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) through Finan-
cial Support to Research (Process No. 405740/2018–2) is gratefully
acknowledged.
Data availability The datasets generated during the current study are
available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code availability No code was developed in the current study.
Declarations
Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applied.
Consent for publication Not applied.
13
R. D. M. Fernandes et al.
Conflict of interest The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional declarations for articles in life science journals that report
the results of studies involving humans and/or animals Not applied.
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