摘要：South Africa’s wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) production has declined progressively from 2.5 million tonnes,produced on 974 000 ha in 2002, to approximately 1.7 million tonnes, produced on 500 000 ha in 2013. 1 Thecountry is therefore increasingly reliant on imports of wheat to sustain domestic demand. A decline in land areaunder wheat suggests producer disinterest in wheat production in South Africa, because of the low profitability ofthe crop. 2,3 Much of the wheat production area is being lost to other economically important crops such as maize(Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L.) as the country has limited land and water resources for expansion ofthe crop production area. Therefore, in search of solutions for increasing wheat production, the focus has not onlybeen on how to return some land area to wheat, but also on how to immediately and realistically improve yieldson current production lands.
关键词：tillage;wheat yield potential; yield gap analysis; conservation agriculture
