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Processing tomato production is expected to decrease by 2050 due to the projected increase in temperature

A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 07 July 2022

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Abstract

The global production of processing tomatoes is concentrated in a small number of regions where climate change could have a notable impact on the future supply. Process-based tomato models project that the production in the main producing countries (the United States, Italy and China, representing 65% of global production) will decrease 6% by 2050 compared with the baseline period of 1980–2009. The predicted reduction in processing tomato production is due to a projected increase in air temperature. Under an ensemble of projected climate scenarios, California and Italy might not be able to sustain current levels of processing tomato production due to water resource constraints. Cooler producing regions, such as China and the northern parts of California, stand to improve their competitive advantage. The projected environmental changes indicate that the main growing regions of processing tomatoes might change in the coming decades.

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Fig. 1: Simulated trends of processing tomato production.
Fig. 2: Relationship between simulated processing tomato yield and mean air temperature at different locations and different future climate scenarios.
Fig. 3: Relation between mean air temperature, latitude and yield.
Fig. 4: Production stability.
Fig. 5: Water-use efficiency.

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Data availability

The DSSAT model is available from the DSSAT portal upon request free of charge (https://dssat.net/). The baseline weather data were obtained for free from NASA Power (https://power.larc.nasa.gov/) and the climate projections from https://www.isimip.org/. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The codes for generating the figures and the simulated outputs used to build the figures are available as: ‘Replication data for: Processing tomato production is expected to decrease due to the projected increase in temperature’, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SNDP5W, Harvard Dataverse. Source data are provided with this paper.

Change history

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Acknowledgements

D.R. and D.C. dedicate this manuscript to the memory of Prof. Antonio Michele Stanca of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia who passed away. His useful feedback inspired us to make this study by giving us directions and encouragements. D.N. was supported by John E. ‘Bric’ Elliot Professor Endowment at The University of Texas at Austin. A.C.R.’s contributions were made possible by NASA Earth Sciences Division support for the NASA GISS Climate Impacts Group.

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Contributions

D.C. initiated the study, calibrated and ran the baseline of the crop model, wrote the manuscript and analysed the data. S.J. ran the crop model, formatted the data, developed the codes for the figures and contributed to writing the manuscript. G.H. supported the model’s calibration/evaluation and contributed to writing the manuscript. A.C.R. provided the climate data and contributed to writing the manuscript. D.N. contributed on the crop-climate simulations and to writing the manuscript. D.R. contributed in the literature review of the data for tomato calibration and evaluation, and to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Davide Cammarano.

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Nature Food thanks Domenico Ventrella and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary methods (trend analysis), Tables 1–8 and Figs. 1–18.

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Cammarano, D., Jamshidi, S., Hoogenboom, G. et al. Processing tomato production is expected to decrease by 2050 due to the projected increase in temperature. Nat Food 3, 437–444 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00521-y

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