The aim of this study was to assess the effects of climate change on crop water requirements. Two periods were compared in the area of Capitanata, i.e., the past time (1951-2000) and the near future (2021-2050). The comparison concerned seasonal and daily evapotranspiration (ET) of durum wheat and tomato. The ET was estimated by AquaCrop and CRITERIA models after their calibration and validation. During the crop seasons, the main effect of climate change resulted in daily temperature increase and effective rainfall decrease. On the seasonal scale, the crop ET value was expected to be lower than in the past, following the reduction of the crop cycle (7 days shorter in the case of tomato and 8 days in the case of wheat). However, average daily evapotranspiration in the subsequent scenarios proved to be higher than in the past on a daily scale (from 12.0 to 17.3 % for tomato and from 6.
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4 to 9.2 % for wheat, according to AquaCrop and CRITERIA models, respectively). With a view to adapt the Mediterranean cropping systems to the constraints deriving from climate change, the recourse to agro-techniques was suggested in the final section.
