Definitions and determination of crop yield, yield gaps, and of rates of change

Given the importance of crop yield and yield progress, this review endeavours to clearly define the different representations of yield, discuss their measurement, and elucidate some controlling factors in yield change. For a field, farm, district or region, average farm or actual yield (FY) is central, but potential (and water-limited potential) yield (PY, PYw) is also an important yardstick. PY is defined here as the measured yield of the best cultivar, grown with optimal agronomy and without manageable biotic and abiotic stresses, under natural resource and cropping system conditions representative of the target area. Economic yield, governed by considerations of profit and risk, and record and theoretical yield, complete the picture. Yield gap is defined as the difference between PY and FY under the same environment. Across most crop-region combinations in the last 2 to 3 decades, FY progress has been associated with both PY progress and yield gap closing, and a simple model, based on linear regression against time, is proposed for understanding this. PY advance is the result of plant breeding and new agronomy (and their interaction, usually positive), while yield gap closing arises with the adoption by farmers of known innovations faster than new ones are invented. Unravelling the true technological component in apparent progress in PY, and especially in FY, is not necessarily simple, and confounding factors are listed and discussed.