Global warming will reduce European hop yields by 4-18% by 2050

The scientists' findings were published in an article in the journal Nature Communications. “Our calculations show that global warming has already affected hop production - in the mid-1990s, hops began to ripen 20 days earlier, and their yields decreased by 5.8 tons per hectare compared to the 1970s. By the middle of the century, its yield will fall by another 4-18%, and the concentration of alpha acids will decrease by 20-31%,” the researchers write. This conclusion was reached by a group of European climatologists led by Ulf Büntgen, a professor at the University of Cambridge (UK), while studying how the climate and precipitation levels have changed in the central regions of Europe, where hops are grown for brewing needs. About 90% of such regions are located in Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, whose farmers traditionally supply the largest European breweries with hops. Professor Büntgen and his colleagues were interested in how climate changes between 1971 and 2018 ...