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Ozone pollution induced-yield loss of major staple crops in China and effects from COVID-19.

Haiyan Liu,Siyuan Wang,Guangsheng Chen,Zhaozhong Feng,Di Liu,Wenxiu Zhang,S. Pan,Hanqin Tian

Published 2025 in Journal of Environmental Science

ABSTRACT

Surface ozone (O3) pollution showed a continuous increasing trend during the recent decades in China, posing an increasing threat to food security. A wide range of yield reductions have been reported and thus more studies are needed to narrow down the uncertainty resulting from spatiotemporal accuracy of O3 metrics and extrapolation methods. Based on a high spatial resolution (0.1°) hourly surface O3 data, here we analyzed the spatiotemporal O3 pollution patterns and impacts on yield, production and economic losses for wheat, rice, and maize in China during 2005-2020. The accumulated O3 exposure over a threshold of 40 ppb (AOT40) increased by 10 % during 2005-2019, and a decrease of 5.56 % was observed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. Rising O3 pollution reduced national level wheat, rice and maize yields by 14.51 % ± 0.43 %, 11.10 % ± 0.6 %, and 3.99 % ± 0.11 %, respectively. A Business-As-Usual projection suggested that the relative yield loss (RYL) would potentially reach 8 %-18 % at the national scale by 2050 if no emission control is implemented. COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 led to significantly reduced RYL for maize (0.52 %) and rice (2.17 %) but not for wheat (0.11 %), with the largest reduction (1.88 %-9.4 %) in North China Plain, highlighting the potential benefits of emission control. Our findings provided robust evidence that rising O3 pollution has significantly affected China's crop yields, production and economic losses, underscoring the urgent need to curb O3 pollution to safeguard food security, particularly in densely populated and industrialized regions.

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