RAPTURE: Resilient Agricultural Practices for Transforming Uncertain and Resource-Scarce Environments Tool

The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approach, a sustainable alternative to conventional practices in agriculture, supports three main pillars: increasing productivity, resilience, and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation through the adoption of climate-smart practices (CSPs). Effective CSA assessment tools are needed to evaluate the impact of and support the broader adoption of CSPs. This study addresses this need by developing the RAPTURE (Resilient Agricultural Practices for Transforming Uncertain and Resource-Scarce Environments) tool. The RAPTURE tool was developed through five steps, which included collecting data on CSA definitions, existing practices and classifications, climatic conditions of the study areas, and the mathematical equations used to assess CSPs—all of which were stored in databases. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework was adopted to guide the selection and inclusion of 222 studies from the Web of Science database, forming the basis for the development of the RAPTURE tool. The first step of RAPTURE synthesizes simple and complex definitions of CSA from the database of 35 definitions. For the second and third steps, an updated classification of the CSPs was developed using a database with 78 CSPs, and a weather conditions database created from areas where CSPs have been studied and implemented was also provided, respectively. The fourth step of the RAPTURE tool includes a database containing the input and output variables necessary for the assessment of CSPs’ impacts, which is essential for the selection of an assessment method. The fifth and last step of the tool contains the assessment methods available, including 24 mathematical methods documented and synthesized. An application of RAPTURE using agricultural data from Florida in 2022 and 2023, and considering an increase of 20% with the implementation of CSPs, showed better productivity and rain-use efficiency. While previous studies have shown that adopting CSPs in agriculture provides several benefits, such as better agricultural production, higher carbon sequestration, the application of the RAPTURE tool in assessing CSPs also demonstrates their ability to increase productivity and resource-use efficiency.