Paper Reviewed
Mansouri, H., Raei, Y. and Zaeim, A.N. 2015. Simulating future wheat yield under climate change, carbon dioxide enrichment and technology improvement in Iran. Case study: Azarbaijan region. Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research 13(4), c0306.

In describing their study, Mansouri et al. (2015) write that wheat yields were projected for three future time periods (2020, 2050 and 2080) compared to the baseline year (2011) under two of the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), each of which included SRES-A2 as the regional economic scenario and SRES-B1 as the environmental scenario that pertained to the Azarbaijan region of northwest Iran, while a linear regression model describing the relationship between wheat yield and historical year was developed to investigate a "technology development effect." Last of all, a decision support system for agro-technology transfer (DSSAT4.5) was used "to evaluate the influence of climate change on wheat yield." And what did they thereby learn?

The three Iranian researchers report that when the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 were considered, all regions experienced an increase in wheat yield, which "ranged from 5% to 38% across all times, scenarios and regions." And, therefore, they concluded that "we may expect a higher yield of wheat in northwest Iran in the future if technology development continues as well as in past years," which, one could logically conclude, is likely to be the case.