Significance

Increasing diversity within crops may be a powerful way to reduce agricultural declines from climate change. As such, it has garnered increasing attention, especially in documenting within-crop diversity through different cultivars or wild relatives. Yet, there are few tests of whether this diversity can mitigate losses with warming. Here, using European (predominantly French) databases to forecast winegrape phenology, we test if shifting cultivars changes predictions of future growing regions. We find that cultivar diversity halved potential losses of winegrowing regions under a 2 °C warming scenario and could reduce losses by a third if warming reaches 4 °C. Thus, diversity—if adopted by growers locally—can mitigate agricultural losses, but its effectiveness will depend on global decisions regarding future emissions.

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/6/2864