exploitable yield gap

To realize global food demand by 2050 world cereal production should be increased up to 49% compared to 2006. This level of production could be achieved by annual yield increment of 1.16%. However, the current rates are much lower. At the same time, there is a very restricted area to increase cultivated lands because of resource limitation, provided that increase in crop yields is the main option to sustain food security. Potential yield (YP) could be achieved when limiting and reducing factors are completely absent during crop growth. YP is an indicator for the yielding capacity of a given environment and management system and estimating the difference between YP and actual yield, known as yield gap, is crucial for improvement of crop production systems at regional or national scale. In this study yield gap and its temporal trend for sugar beet, irrigated and rainfed wheat are estimated over Khorasan Razavi province based on the method developed by Global Yield Gap Atlas. Following the protocol provided by Global Yield Gap Atlas, Khorasan province was clustered into agroclimatic zones using the proposed indices (cumulative degree days above 0 ºC, aridity index and temperature seasonality) based on 10 years (1384-1393) weather data. YP of sugar beet and irrigated wheat for the study period in the climatic regions was first estimated for selected cities within each region using LINTUL model and finally the simulation results were up scaled from cities to region and from regions to the whole province. The model was cross-validated against measured data using leave-one-out (LOO) method to increase accuracy of predictions. Potential yield of rainfed wheat (YW) was estimated from frontier production function which was fitted to yield data over a wide range of annual precipitation. Yield gap (YG) of the studied crops was estimated as the difference between potential (YP) and actual yields (YA) for each region and over the 10-year period. In addition exploitable gap (YG85%=85%YP-YA) was also calculated. The accuracy of LINTUL model for simulation of sugar beet and irrigated wheat yields was considerably increased after cross validation and the prediction error was reduced by 6.5 - 7.8%. Mean YP of irrigated wheat in the climatic region 1 (temperate, semi-dry), 2 (hot, dry) and 3 (temperate, dry) was respectively, 7248, 6478 and 7852 and for the whole province 6936 kg ha-1. Time trend of YP for irrigated wheat was not significant in 3 climatic regions however, high annual variation of YP was found over the studied period. Results indicated that up to 74% of this variation was accounted for by changes in the effective grain filling period in response to temperature. YG85% of irrigated wheat in all climatic regions was increased up to 4 t ha-1 during 1384-1388 but decreased later on so that relative gap was 0.48-0.50 of YP in 1993. Average YW of rainfed wheat in the climatic regions of the province was estimated as 2000-2800 kg ha-1 with a negative trend due to decreased precipitation, the highest negative slope in YW (59 kg ha-1 y-1) was found in the hot dry region. Rainfed wheat showed an extremely high yield gap in all climatic regions and mean relative yield gap (YG/YW) was estimated as 0.75-0.80 over the province. Mean YP of sugar beet in different climatic regions of the province was estimated from 78 to 88 t ha-1 with the lowest potential in hot-dry region. However, declining trend was found in the yield gap of sugar beet in all studied regions with the highest gap filling rate of 1.44 t ha-1 y-1 in temperate-dry region. Simulated YP of sugar beet and irrigated wheat were higher in temperate-semi arid regions of the province and lower in hot-dry regions. However, cold-semi arid regions had the highest YW of rainfed wheat. When up-scaled over the province, YG85% was about 50% of YP for irrigated wheat and sugar beet and 25% for rainfed wheat. It was concluded that closing yield gap of sugar beet and irrigated wheat would be possible mainly by improving management practices however, for rainfed wheat breeding strategies should be considered as the first priority.