The Global Yield Gap and Water Productivity Atlas - The Water for ...

waterforfood.nebraska.edu
RESEARCH for WATER
and FOOD SECURITY
The Global Yield Gap and
Water Productivity Atlas
Providing food and water security for a population expected
to exceed 9 billion by 2050 while conserving natural resources
requires achieving high yields on every hectare of currently
used arable land that is suitable for intensification. The
Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University
of Nebraska is leading development of the Global Yield Gap
and Water Productivity Atlas, an advanced modeling and
mapping tool to identify existing farmland with the potential
to sustainably produce much higher yields by closing the gap
between farmers’ current yield and the yield potential defined
by climate, soil and cropping system.
The Global Yield Gap Atlas will provide:
• The first transparent, reproducible, agronomically
accurate, interactive map-based web platform to estimate
the exploitable gaps in yield and water productivity for
the major food crops worldwide
• Public access to the supporting data and detailed
information about the underpinning assumptions
and methods used to obtain the yield gap estimates
for each crop
• A tool to help farmers, governments, policy makers,
foundations, private sector organizations and others
identify regions with the greatest potential to
sustainably produce more food

For more information contact:
Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute
234 Whittier Research Center
2200 Vine Street
Lincoln, NE 68583-0857 U.S.A.
tel: +1 402 472 5145
Email: waterforfood@nebraska.edu
The University of Nebraska is an
Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity institution.
The Water for Food Institute, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
and Wageningen University are leading an international
collaboration to produce the Global Yield Gap and Water
Productivity Atlas. With funding from the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation the Atlas initially will focus on selected
crops in 12 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia:
Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Ethiopia,
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, India and Bangladesh.
The Daugherty Water for Food Institute is funding Atlas
development for Brazil and Argentina. Both efforts involve
close collaboration with leading agronomists in each country.
Atlas Development
The Atlas is a global project based on local data and requires
creating networks of agronomists to obtain climate, soil,
and cropping system data and use these data to simulate
crop yield potential under irrigated and rainfed conditions.
Initial work includes developing:
• A standard protocol for quantifying yield potential, yield gap
and water productivity
• A network of local agronomists and experts to provide
knowledge about crop management and productivity,
and existing soil and climate
• Methods to develop agronomically relevant long-term weather
databases in major crop-producing regions lacking these data
and new methods for up-scaling local yield gap estimates to
regional and national levels
• The mapview interface and interactive website
Learn more at: yieldgap.org
waterforfood.nebraska.edu