Precipitation variability and the sugarcane climate demand in Brazil

Abstract:

This study presents the precipitation variability in São Paulo state/Brazil considering the climate demand for high sugarcane productivity. The Brazilian sugarcane and the bioethanol chain are facing an increase demand in response of the biofuel industry expansion. The productivity improvement is the key point to face the challenges about the land expansion in the Brazilian agriculture. The sugarcane phenology is climate dependent even being efficient in the decarboxylation process. The sprouting, growing, yield and the sugar content are determined by the climate. The accumulated rainy days during the pre harvest or more than 180 days of dry period can reduce the sugar content during the maturation process. Daily rainfall time series for the period 1960-2003 from 210 rain gauges at São Paulo state - the major Brazilian producer - are used. We subset the time series in the annual, seasonal, ten-day totals and dry and wet spells analysis. We used the mann- kendall non-parametric test to calculate the trends. The annual, the seasonal totals and the dry and wet spells did not showed a significant change in time. However, the ten-day total analysis in the beginning of the rainy season - i.e. in October - showed an interesting changing pattern - 24% of gauges showed a significant negative trend (p_value<0.1). These gauges are located in specific regions with the highest sugarcane production. Also, the October totals showed significant and negative trends (p_value<0.1) for more than 95% of precipitation gauges. These results are strongly indicating a longer dry season in the last twenty years. These changes in the precipitation variability can be related with the instability of the sugarcane market in Brazil in the last years.