Food-centric interlinkages in agricultural food-energy-water nexus under climate change and irrigation management

•The interlinkages among food, land, water, and energy in agriculture were affected by climate change and irrigation management.•We suggested the food-energy-water nexus specialized in agriculture with a case of paddy rice.•We assessed the impacts of intermittent and continuous irrigation on water, energy and land footprints under various climate change scenarios.•We found the different trade-offs between irrigation water saving and productivity by GCMs. This study aimed to assess the holistic impacts of climate change and irrigation management on food centric water-energy-land interlinkages in the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus specialized in agriculture. Accordingly, we analyzed the trends and variation in productivity, irrigation requirement, and energy input for paddy rice production, which is the representative crop in Korea, from 1990 to 2099 with eight general circulation models (GCMs) as climate change scenarios. Results showed that the productivity of paddy rice would decrease owing to climate change, and its variation would increase. Irrigation requirement under the MIROC-ESM scenario was estimated as 849 mm year−1 in 2020−2099, which was 37 mm year−1 greater than that in 1990−2018. The change in irrigation management from continuous to intermittent irrigation would affect the interlinkages in the agricultural FEW nexus. Intermittent irrigation could positively influence irrigation water savings but lower productivity under climate change, and would increase the variation in both productivity and irrigation requirement. Finally, we analyzed the blue water and land footprints as interlinkage indicators in the FEW nexus. In particular, we classified the simulation results from eight GCMs in 2020−2099 based on footprints and precipitation through K-means clustering to assess the differences between footprints under various precipitation conditions. The largest number of cases was classified in the cluster characterized by large blue water footprints but small land footprints under low precipitation. These results could help develop the agricultural FEW nexus platform considering the various impacts of climate change and irrigation management.