Assessment and modelling of crop yield and water footprint of winter wheat by aquacrop

Agriculture has a considerable impact on water resources and it is strongly affected by climate change. It is important to determine and forecast crop water use for controlling and planning water resources while ensuring agricultural sustainability. Crop Water Footprint (WF) is an indicator of water consumed for crop production. The aim of the study is to calculate WF of winter wheat using Water Footprint Assessment (WFA) and to simulate future WFs by means of AquaCrop model for the Thrace region in Turkey. Although winter wheat does not require irrigation, the estimation of the WF is of importance due to its extensive production throughout the country. The WFs is estimated using meteorological and CORDEX data. The emerging findings indicate an increase in average temperature between 0.9 and 4.0°C. Precipitation is expected to increase by 15% under the optimistic scenario (RCP 4.5) and decrease by 17% under the worst-case scenario (RCP 8.5) by 2099. Winter wheat yield will positively be affected by increasing temperatures by up to 17% under RCP 4.5 and 26%.