Possible effects of climate change on sunflower agriculture in Thrace

Conflict environments such as population growth in the world, the Covid-19 epidemic and the Ukraine-Russia war have broken the global supply chain, revealing the strategic importance of food security and sustainable agricultural production. This situation necessitated production planning to meet the demand for agricultural products both in the world and in our country. Knowing the climatic factors such as temperature, precipitation, light, humidity, and wind of the agricultural production areas well, choosing the product to be grown and starting the vegetation of the selected product at the most appropriate time prevent product losses. Temperature, which is one of the most important climatic parameters in terms of agricultural production; It determines the emergence, development, vegetation period and maturation of the plant from the soil. There are concrete findings in various sources that change trends in climate components can affect agricultural production and yield positively or negatively. These change trends in climate elements can show large deviations from global trends on a local/regional scale. Developing and implementing risk reduction and adaptation strategies and good agricultural practices to increase local/regional agricultural productivity has become imperative for sustainable agricultural production. The basis of the study is as an indicator of the impact of climate change in terms of sunflower agriculture, according to the 1971-2000 reference period; 1981-2010; the areal changes of the Total Growth Degree Day (TGDD) and Thermal Growth Season Length (TGSL) values calculated for the 1991-2020 and 2020-2098 periods. To determine the local temperature changes in the Thrace region and their possible effects on sunflower agriculture, first (1971-2000; 1981-2010; 1991-2020) the extreme values of the observed maximum daily temperatures for 30-year periods were examined. Using these extreme values, TBDG and TBDU were calculated based on the base temperature value of 6.7 °C. The spatial distribution and temporal variation of the calculated TBDG and TBDU in the Thrace region were evaluated in terms of sunflower cultivation. To analyze the effects of climate change on a regional/regional basis, climate projections developed by the General Directorate of Meteorology (MGM) for 3 global climate models and two scenarios were used. For the 2020-2098 period, the extreme values of the daily maximum and minimum temperature data produced with the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios of the GFDL, HadGEM and MPI models were used. By examining the data of observation and climate models and the areal changes of the main lines of sunflower agriculture in Thrace according to the 1971-2000 reference period, it is aimed to be a reference to agricultural production policies in terms of the future situation.