Potential impact of climate change on Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) distribution at the scale of France

A recent scientific paper in Molecular Ecology Resources (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1755-0998.13289), published this month, suggests that Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) may find difficulties to adapt to climate change in Mediterranean areas. This research is based on Genome‐Environment Association (GEA) and GWAS analyses.

We propose here to compare their results, by using our SDM (Species Distribution Model) named “Climflora”. Our model is based on the probabilistic calibration of Perennial Ryegrass observations in 5.000 plots in France, with 67 climate and soil variables.

We estimated the probability of finding suitable areas for Perennial Ryegrass in France, at a spatial resolution of 1km for the current situation and for 2050 and 2100 RCP6.0 scenario.

Our results show similar trends with the results of Blanco-Pastor et al. (2021) according to the opportunity to Lolium perenne L. to find suitable areas in 2050 and 2100 in the south part of France.

Observations of Lolium Perenne L. and suitable areas according to current climate.

Suitable areas in 2050 AND 2100 RCP6.0