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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has warned that several major crops, including wheat and coffee, could lose half their optimally suitable land by 2100.

The organisation has upgraded its Adaptation, Biodiversity and Carbon Mapping Tool (ABC-Map) geospatial app with a new indicator, providing information on the suitability of major crops in evolving climate scenarios to the end of the century.

Developed for policymakers, technicians and project designers, the ABC-Map offers an initial screening of the climate-related risks, biodiversity indicators and carbon reduction potential of a selected project. The open-source app uses satellite imagery based on Google Earth engine, with information from global datasets.

Data from a study by French fin-tech start-up Finres, commissioned by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and funded by the French Development Agency, is incorporated into the indicator.

The study, ‘Have crops already reached peak suitability: assessing global climatic suitability decreases for crop cultivation,’ uses a new method to assess crop suitability in varied climate scenarios.

It concludes that five out of nine major staple and cash crops – wheat, coffee, beans, cassava and plantain – are already losing optimal growing conditions, and some could lose half their optimal suitable land by 2100.

In particular, the study’s researchers suggest coffee production in some of the major coffee-growing regions could decline sharply by the end of the century. Beans and wheat could also experience significant losses, especially in regions such as North America and Europe.

Maize and rice could initially find more suitable areas for cultivation, researchers suggest, but this situation could reverse by the end of the same time period under high-emission scenarios.

The ABC-Map features indicators in three sections: adaptation, biodiversity and carbon. The new indicator expands the scope of the adaptation section, which previously only displayed information on past trends in a given area, such as temperature and rainfall.

Users can input a location and select a crop from 30 options, with the tool highlighting the suitability of selected crops in that area for time periods stretching to 2100. It provides a ‘crop suitability score’ for two different climate emission scenarios.

The FAO said it is also planning to introduce an indicator with information on livestock heat stress and another for crop water requirements, which would estimate expected rainfall and potential irrigation needs.