Grazing Crops to be Aided by Rising Temperatures

A rising temperature is traditionally bad news for farmers, and most crops are very finicky about growing conditions. However, new research has shown that a warmer world is actually beneficial for one particular crop commonly used for livestock grazing.

The crop, Stylosanthes capitata Vogel (SCV), is a thick leaved plant; though not exactly the tastiest of legume treats, it can regrow quickly and spread prolifically. This makes it an ideal plant for grazing livestock - namely cattle - in tropical environments.

According to reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world is due for an overall temperature hike of about 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 Fahrenheit) by 2050.

And while this may be bad news for some plants, experts say that the effect this will have on SCV will be only positive.

A study recently published in the journal Environmental and Experimental Botany details how researchers from the University of São Paulo simulated growing conditions for SCV as they are expected to be in 2050 in a controlled environment. The results surprised them.

"The 2 C increase in temperature in the environment in which Stylosanthes capitata Vogel was experimentally cultivated promoted photosynthesis, in addition to increasing the leaf area and biomass of the plant," Carlos Alberto Martinez, project coordinator and first author of the study, said in a statement.

Martinez and his colleagues had expected that the beneficial side of this elevated temperature would fall away once growing temperatures passed this dangerous two-degree threshold, but that proved incorrect as well.

In fact, the more than two-degree increase caused the plants to grow about 30 percent larger than SCVs grown at modern growing temperatures with elevated photosynthesis production and even growth rate.

Still, while this is great news for cattle farmers, it's not the best news for the rest of the world. Nature World News reported earlier this week how cattle are leaving a heavy environmental burden on the Earth both in terms of water consumption and methane production - problems that will exacerbate other issues already linked to a warming global climate.