Modeling Climate Suitability for Triticum aestivum L. (Common Wheat) in Pakistan Using the MaxEnt Approach

Amna Rashid; Muhammad Nawaz Chaudhry; Ahmed Mohamed Emara; Arfat Ahmad Khan; Zaffar Ahmed Shaikh

doi:10.48084/etasr.16545

Authors

Amna Rashid Department of Environmental Science, Lahore School of Economics, Lahore, Pakistan https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2312-5824
Muhammad Nawaz Chaudhry Department of Environmental Science, Lahore School of Economics, Lahore, Pakistan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2158-5146
Ahmed Mohamed Emara Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Business and Technology, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia | Department of Engineering Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3849-1840
Arfat Ahmad Khan Department of Computer Science, College of Computing, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0918-8874
Zaffar Ahmed Shaikh Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, Benazir Bhutto Shaheed University Lyari, Karachi, Pakistan | School of Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0323-2061

Volume: 16 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 34559-34565 | April 2026 | https://doi.org/10.48084/etasr.16545

Received: 27 November 2025 | Revised: 6 January 2026 and 21 January 2026 | Accepted: 23 January 2026 | Online: 18 March 2026

Corresponding author: Zaffar Ahmed Shaikh

Abstract

Pakistan ranks among the top ten nations globally that are likely to experience severe impacts from climate change and are facing critical food security challenges. Variability in temperature and rainfall alters the geographical suitability of land for crop cultivation. This study employed the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model to forecast the effects of climate change and evaluate land suitability for Triticum aestivum L. (common wheat) production in Pakistan, where it is a major staple crop. Bioclimatic variables and occurrence data for two climatic scenarios, Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5, from five General Circulation Models (GCMs) were used for the year 2070. The prime factors affecting the Triticum aestivum L. distribution are temperature seasonality, annual precipitation, and mean temperature of the warmest quarter. The findings indicate an average decline in highly suitable and moderately suitable areas, whereas an increase is observed in the least suitable areas in future scenarios. The highly suitable area for future distribution accounts for 26.78% and 19.67% under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, respectively, highlighting a negative effect on prospective wheat production in Pakistan. The outcome of this research is of utmost significance for decision-makers to develop suitable adaptation and mitigation protocols to sustain wheat productivity under a changing climate.

Keywords:

climate change, spatial rarefaction, Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model, Jackknife analysis, potential distribution, Triticum aestivum L.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

V. Tiwari and J. Shoran, "Growth and Production of Wheat," in Soils, Plant Growth and Crop Production, W. H. Verheye, Ed. Oxford, U.K.: Eolss Publishers Company Limited, 2010, pp. 298–330.

A. T. Simmons, A. L. Cowie, and P. M. Brock, "Climate change mitigation for Australian wheat production," Science of The Total Environment, vol. 725, July 2020, , Art. no. 138260.

C. I. Oyewole, "The Wheat Crop," Technical report 01, 2016.

F. Gul, D. Jan, and M. Ashfaq, "Assessing the socio-economic impact of climate change on wheat production in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan," Environmental Science and Pollution Research, vol. 26, no. 7, pp. 6576–6585, Mar. 2019.

A. Brooks, "Using Ecological Niche Modelling to Predict Climate Change Responses of Ten Key Fishery Species in Aotearoa New Zealand," M.S. thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, 2020.

S. Ali et al., "Climate Change and Its Impact on the Yield of Major Food Crops: Evidence from Pakistan," Foods, vol. 6, no. 6, May 2017, Art. no. 39.

L. Fei, Z. Meijun, S. Jiaqi, C. Zehui, W. Xiaoli, and Y. Jiuchun, "Maize, wheat and rice production potential changes in China under the background of climate change," Agricultural Systems, vol. 182, June 2020, Art. no. 102853.

Z. Zheng, G. Hoogenboom, H. Cai, and Z. Wang, "Winter wheat production on the Guanzhong Plain of Northwest China under projected future climate with SimCLIM," Agricultural Water Management, vol. 239, Sept. 2020, Art. no. 106233.

D. R. Easterling, G. A. Meehl, C. Parmesan, S. A. Changnon, T. R. Karl, and L. O. Mearns, "Climate Extremes: Observations, Modeling, and Impacts," Science, vol. 289, no. 5487, pp. 2068–2074, Sept. 2000.

P. Balvanera et al., "Quantifying the evidence for biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning and services," Ecology Letters, vol. 9, no. 10, pp. 1146–1156, Oct. 2006.

J. Beck, "Predicting climate change effects on agriculture from ecological niche modeling: who profits, who loses?," Climatic Change, vol. 116, no. 2, pp. 177–189, Jan. 2013.

J. A. Syeda, "Impact of Climate Change on Wheat Production in Dinajpur Region of Bangladesh: an Econometric Analysis," Journal of Environmental Science and Natural Resources, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 157–162, 2017.

M. Ahmed and M. Schmitz, "Economic assessment of the impact of climate change on the agriculture of Pakistan," Business and Economic Horizons, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1–12, Jan. 2011.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Part B: Regional Aspects: Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

P. Z. Janjua, G. Samad, N. U. Khan, and M. Nasir, "Impact of Climate Change on Wheat Production: A Case Study of Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 799–822, 2010.

A. Kumar, J. Singh B, and P. Sharma, "Assessing the Climate Change Impact on Rice and Wheat Production in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana States of India," Climate Change, vol. 6, no. 21, pp. 74–93, Mar. 2020.

P. Z. Janjua, G. Samad, and N. Khan, "Climate Change and Wheat Production in Pakistan: An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach," NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, vol. 68, pp. 13–19, Mar. 2014.

E. Zaveri and D. B. Lobell, "The role of irrigation in changing wheat yields and heat sensitivity in India," Nature Communications, vol. 10, no. 1, Sept. 2019, Art. no. 4144.

A. Araya et al., "Spatial analysis of the impact of climate change factors and adaptation strategies on productivity of wheat in Ethiopia," Science of The Total Environment, vol. 731, Aug. 2020, Art. no. 139094.

A. M. S. Kheir et al., "Impacts of rising temperature, carbon dioxide concentration and sea level on wheat production in North Nile delta," Science of The Total Environment, vol. 651, pp. 3161–3173, Feb. 2019.

B. K. Kogo, L. Kumar, R. Koech, and C. S. Kariyawasam, "Modelling Climate Suitability for Rainfed Maize Cultivation in Kenya Using a Maximum Entropy (MaxENT) Approach," Agronomy, vol. 9, no. 11, Nov. 2019, Art. no. 727.

Y. Yue, P. Zhang, and Y. Shang, "The potential global distribution and dynamics of wheat under multiple climate change scenarios," Science of The Total Environment, vol. 688, pp. 1308–1318, Oct. 2019.

D. L. Warren and S. N. Seifert, "Ecological niche modeling in Maxent: the importance of model complexity and the performance of model selection criteria," Ecological Applications, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 335–342, 2011.

S. L. Jayasinghe and L. Kumar, "Modeling the climate suitability of tea [Camellia sinensis(L.) O. Kuntze] in Sri Lanka in response to current and future climate change scenarios," Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, vol. 272–273, pp. 102–117, July 2019.

S. Salma, S. Rehman, and M. A. Shah, "Rainfall Trends in Different Climate Zones of Pakistan," Pakistan Journal of Meteorology, vol. 9, no. 17, pp. 37–47, July 2012.

A. M. Samy, A. H. Elaagip, M. A. Kenawy, C. F. J. Ayres, A. T. Peterson, and D. E. Soliman, "Climate Change Influences on the Global Potential Distribution of the Mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus, Vector of West Nile Virus and Lymphatic Filariasis," Pl, vol. 11, no. 10, Oct. 2016, Art. no. e0163863.

S. J. Phillips, R. P. Anderson, and R. E. Schapire, "Maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions," Ecological Modelling, vol. 190, no. 3, pp. 231–259, Jan. 2006.

A. A. Khan, A. A. Laghari, A. A. Shaikh, Z. A. Shaikh, and A. K. Jumani, "Innovation in Multimedia Using IoT Systems," in Multimedia Computing Systems and Virtual Reality, 1st ed., R. Tiwari, N. Duhan, M. Mittal, A. Anand, and M. A. Khan, Eds. Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press, 2022, pp. 171–187.

D. Bhandari, P. Bi, J. B. Sherchand, M. Dhimal, and S. Hanson-Easey, "Climate change and infectious disease research in Nepal: Are the available prerequisites supportive enough to researchers?," Acta Tropica, vol. 204, Apr. 2020, Art. no. 105337.