Shifts in soil-climate combination deserve attention

•The dependency of crop responses to climate change on soil type is shown.•Soil type affects the diversity of forage crop yield responses.•Shifts in climate-soil-crop combinations is crucial for adaptation.

In addition to causing shifts in regional climate, climate change will also affect the combination of climatic conditions and dominant soil type. This may be reflected in crop responses; however, currently, empirical knowledge in this regard is limited. We hypothesised that 1) the weather patterns most influencing forage crop yield variation vary among soil types 2) the yield responses of forage crop species and cultivars to agro-climatic variables depend on soil type, and 3) response diversity of the forage crop species and cultivars to agro-climatic factors depends on soil type. To assess these assumptions, we utilized the Finnish long-term multi-location Official Variety Trial and weather data for 1979-2012 as a case study. The yield responses of timothy (Phleum pratense L.), meadow fescue (Festuca pratensis Huds.), tall fescue (Lolium arundinaceum (Schreb)/Festuca arundinacea (Schreb)), Festulolium (Festuca sp. × Lolium sp.), red clover (Trifolium pratense L.), and Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum L.) to the critical agro-climatic variables depended in most cases on whether the trials were located on clay, coarse mineral, or organic soils. The average yield response to weather was 10% in clay and organic soils and 8% in coarse mineral soils. The diversity of forage crop responses was also dependent on soil type. The demonstrated dependency of crop responses to climate change on soil type emphasizes that attention should be paid to the plausible shifts in soil-climate combinations when planning adaptation.