Page 101 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

chapter 4: assessment of climate change impact on banana production and suitability in ecuador, and general assessment of global banana trends under climate change scenarios
from 790 mm in the south to over 2 500 in the north. The northernmost site in Esmeraldas stands out with a different pattern for the moderately variable years.
The variability analysis was also applied to specific critical seasons. In the case of coastal Ecuador, the rainy season begins in mid-December after a period of five to six months of dry weather. The rains intensify quickly and continue through the end of April and then decline through June. The period from July to November is dry. The months of July and August, however, bring clouds and cool weather which reduce banana growth while, from September, temperatures increase as clouds dissipate. By December, the rains begin again. This average pattern, nevertheless, shows variability from year to year. Two periods of the year were selected as a focus for seasonal variability. The cool season during July and August requires changes
in management and it reduces production, while the rainy season brings more favourable conditions for plant growth, but also for leaf diseases.
Three of the six points were selected for this analysis of seasonal variability (Table 16). The drier site to the south, Pagua, shows greater percentage variability in the rains during the rainy season than the intermediate site, Pichilingue. The northern site in Esmeraldas has most of the points within the blue box indicating that rainy season weather is not highly variable, although all three show similar extreme outliers. For the cool, dry season, variability is high for all sites for rainfall and temperature. Extreme high temperature years for July and August were more frequent in Pagua and Esmeraldas on the northern and southern extremes. In some cases, these extreme years with high temperatures may result in greater productivity, since the average cool temperatures and cloud cover reduce
plant performance. Pagua had a greater frequency of moderately extreme low temperature events for July and August over the registered period. In these years, productivity will be even lower than normal (Figure 28).
This variability in the weather during the rainy season and the dry season is a challenge to banana growers to maintain crop productivity and quality, to meet contracts for volumes of fruit and to control costs. As the focus groups indicate in later sections, this variability is of greater concern for growers than the climate change projections to 2030, 2050 and 2070.
2.5 Projected changes in climate in upper watersheds flowing into banana production areas
The principal banana growing areas of Ecuador in El Oro, Guayas and Los Rios indicate high seasonality, with an extended dry period when irrigation is
Table 16 Puntos representativos para determinar la variabilidad estacional
Location
Agro-climatic zones
Description
1. Provincia de Esmeraldas 432
2. Pichilingue (Los Ríos) 331
3. Pagua (El Oro) 131
>2 500 mm, >24°C, <3 dry months
1 500-2 500 mm, >24°C, >3 dry months
<900 mm, >24°C, >3 dry months
Source: Authors’ elaboration, based on temperature and precipitation data from WorldClim (Hijmans et al., 2005).
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