After a run of poor seasons many grain growers have been hoping that plant breeders would produce varieties that perform well during droughts - varieties that are 'drought resistant'. Yet most growers are aware of the revolution in agronomic thinkingthat Reg French and Jeff Schultz stimulated with their work on water-use efficiency in South Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. They concluded that in practice, the best yield of a cereal crop we can get - in other words, the benchmark of water-use efficiency (WUE) - is about 20 kg per hectare for every mm of water used by the crop (Figure 1).
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