18 Potential impact of future climate change on maize under rainfed condition March 2020 Journal of Agrometeorology 22 (1) : 18-23 (March 2020) Maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the most versatile crops owing to wider adaptability under diverse agro-climatic conditions. Worldwide, it is cultivated on nearly 150 mha in about 160 countries, representing diverse soil, climate, biodiversity, and management practices, and contributes ~36% (782 million tonnes, mt) of global grain production (Singh et al., 2017). In India, maize is the third largest staple food crops in terms of area and contributes nearly 9% in the national food basket. The predominant maize growing states that contributes more than 80% of the total maize production are Andhra Pradesh (20.9%), Karnataka (16.5%), Rajasthan (9.9%), Maharashtra (9.1%), Bihar (8.9%), Uttar Pradesh (6.1%), Madhya Pradesh (5.7%), and Himachal Pradesh (4.4%) (Murdia et al., 2016). Maize is one of the promising options for diversifying agriculture in upland areas of India. The area under maize cultivation in India has gradually expanded over the past few years to about 9.19 million ha Potential impact of future climate change on maize (Zea mays L.) under rainfed condition in central India ROHIT PATIDAR 1 , M. MOHANTY 1 , NISHANT K. SINHA 1* , S.C. GUPTA 2 , J. SOMASUNDARAM 1 , R.S. CHAUDHARY 1 , R. SOLIYA 1 , K.M. HATI 1 , M. PRABHAKAR 3 , K. SAMMI REDDY 3 , A.K. PATRA 1 and SRINIVAS RAO CH. 4 1 ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India; 2 R.A.K College of Agriculture, Sehore, Madhya Pradesh, India; 3 ICAR-Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Hyderabad, Telangana, India; 4 ICAR-National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, Hyderabad, Telangana, India *Corresponding author’s email: nishant.sinha76211@gmail.com ABSTRACT A simulation experiment was carried out using Agriculture Production Systems Simulator (APSIM) model to assess the impact of climate change (change in temperature and rainfall patterns) on productivity of maize in the state Madhya Pradesh. Thirty districts with 74 soil profiles from Madhya Pradesh state were considered for the study. However, we are presenting the average results over districts and soil profiles. A well-parameterised and validated APSIM model was used to simulate the effects of temperature and rainfall on maize grain and biomass yield. Increase in temperature having negative effects on both grain and biomass yield of maize. While increasing the temperature from base to 5 ° C, the grain and biomass yield of maize decreased by 40% and 28%, respectively. Further, increasing the temperature by 1 ° C could reduce the grain and biomass yield by 10% and 8 %, respectively. A small increase in maize yield was observed by 10% decrease of rainfall from the base. While rainfall increase by 10% or more and decrease by >20% would results in lower maize yield and biomass. The decrease in maize yield due to increase in temperature could be attributed to decrease in duration of the crop. One-degree increase in temperature may decrease the duration of crop by 4.3 days. This study also revealed that agronomic management practices such as delaying of sowing dates could reduce the impact of climate change on crop yield to a considerable extent. By adopting the sowing date between 7 th and 14 th July, it may be possible to reduce the impact of temperature change on maize grain and biomass yield in central Indian condition. Key words: Maize, climate change, rainfed, central India in 2014-2015 and produces 24.17 mt (Anonymous, 2016). The change in climate in terms of rainfall variability and temperature fluctuation projected to have significant impacts on agricultural production (Battude et al., 2016). Worldwide, researchers agree that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases lead to accelerating climate change and their impact on agriculture sector at the local, regional and global scales (Li et al., 2014). The impact of climate change on agriculture vary through the latitudes and from crop to crop (Msowoya et al., 2016). Higher temperatures can reduce crop production in many parts of the world (Gohari et al., 2013) although crop yield could increase in temperate region of the world (Chavas et al., 2009). Nevertheless, the majority of the past studies have generally reported that negative impact of climate change on crop production (McDermid et al., 2016; Mohanty et al.,