Climate Adaptation Imperatives: Untapped Global Maize Yield Opportunities

International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. 2014;12(4):471-486

Abstract: “Climate change represents an unavoidable and growing challenge to food security, imposing new adaptation imperatives on all farmers. Maize is arguably the world’s most productive grain crop, as measured by grain yield. However, maize yields vary dramatically due to many factors, including soils, climate, pests, disease, agronomic practices, and seed quality. The difference between observed yields and those achievable by optimized crop production methods is called the yield gap. In this work we quantified the current yield gap for 44 countries through the use of a large private-sector data set recently made available to the crop modelling community.”

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