Yield Gap and Production Gap of Rainfed Winter Wheat in the Southern Great Plains
By Andres Patrignani, R. Lollato, Tyson E. Ochsner, C. Godsey, Jeffrey T. Edwards. 2014
127 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Since 1980, average wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) yields have remained nearly stagnant in the southern Great Plains (SGP) and stagnant in the state of Oklahoma. Yield stagnation can sometimes be attributed to a relatively small gap between current and potential yields, but the magnitude of the yield gap for this region has not been well quantified. The objective of this study was to determine the wheat yield and production gaps in Oklahoma at state and county levels. This involved estimation of attainable yield (Y a ) using a frontier yield function and water-limited potential yield (Y p ) using estimated transpiration and transpiration efficiency. Yield gap and production gap relative to Y a and Y p were calculated using grain yields and harvested area for 19 counties. Current average yield (Y c ) was 2.06 Mg ha –1 at the state level, well below the maximum recorded yield at the plot level of 6.59 Mg ha –1 . The Y p of current wheat varieties is far above Y c in Oklahoma, and Y c represents 74% of Y a but only 30% of Y p at state level. For growing season rainfall (GSRF) amount <250 mm wheat yields were often water-limited. However, average GSRF was 471 mm, and yield was typically limited by factors other than GSRF amount. Production exhibited greater temporal variability than yield, and production gap may be a better indicator than yield gap for regions with highest potential to increase production. Low yields and yield stagnation in Oklahoma cannot be attributed to a small remaining yield gap, nor to inadequate GSRF amount.
Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Global and Planetary Change, Soil Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ad718c583d10cd105ae6cbbfe27f4b3bff83a86a
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Citations in the corpus
- Maximum Attainable Wheat Yield and Resource‐Use Efficiency in the Southern Great Plains (2015, methodology): “The states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas combined produce a total of ~14 million metric tonnes of hard red winter wheat per year in an area of over 8 million hectares (USDA-NASS, 2014).”