Ground level ozone impacts on Indian crops: dose response functions for crops grown in India
Student name: Ms Indu Gaur and Ms Pritha Pande
Guide: Dr Chubamenla Jamir
Year of completion: 2016
Host Organisation: TERI University
Abstract: The fast paced industrialization and economic growth in the last decade has impacted the quality of ambient air in a deleterious way through increase in background concentration of several air pollutants such as ground level ozone. The rapid rise in background ozone concentration has caused a commendable decrease in yield and production of various staple crops of India such as, wheat and rice which consequently poses a high risk to the food security across the region. Both experimental and modeling based studies have shown that the crops grown in India are exposed to increasingly higher magnitude of ozone and have estimated significant decrease in their relative yield due to ozone exposure. The existing regional ozone risks assessments for India have been carried out using North American and European ozone dose response functions which may not be representative of the impact on crops grown in India, given the fact that the crop cultivars and meteorological conditions are different. This study establishes ozone dose response functions for various crops grown in India using the data from existing ozone crop impact studies in the region. The results of the study clearly indicate that crops grown in India are more sensitive to ozone than their North American and European counterparts. As such, existing modelled studies have so far used North American and European dose response functions which are likely to have led to the various uncertainties and underestimated the projection for risks of increasing ozone concentration to Indian crops. Thus this study establishes a robust methodological framework for developing ozone dose-response functions.
Key words: ozone, crops, modeled studies, dose-response functions, framework
