In order to meet increasing demands of food due to rising population and income, food production in India and other south Asian countries need to be increased. Rain-fed agriculture in India, practiced on 94 million hectares (M ha), is considered a major source of production increase in future. This report analyses the magnitude of rain-fed potential yield gaps of rice, wheat, mustard and cotton crops, considering the spatial and temporal variation in climatic features. These yields can be interpreted as the upper limit that can be achieved by the
current varieties in a rain-fed scenario with soil and weather as the only yield reducing factors.