Introduction - Satisfying the growing demand for agricultural products while improving N input efficiency in Mediterranean cereal systems (Hochman et al., 2013) will require significant change in cropping systems structure and management. Our hypothesis, developed from the concepts of eco-efficiency (Keating et al., 2010) is that it is possible to obtain a better compromise between production and resource efficiency by adopting transformational technologies, such as changing genotype or by temporal and/or spatial diversification of crops. In this study, the hypothesis is tested on rotation as a temporal complexification of a cereal system structure. We addressed the following question: does crop rotation allow for a better trade-off between nitrogen efficiency and yield of Durum wheat in farmers conditions and how far can it compensate for the reduction of area allocated to wheat? Materials and Methods - We introduced in the efficiency analysis two intermediate variables between nitrogen supply and grain yield in order to establish a four-quadrant diagram (Fig 1). Nitrogen uptake was used, on the right of this diagram, to separate the efficiencies of resource capture and resource conversion (De Wit, 1992). On the left, N-efficiency was introduced as intermediate variable, in order to visualize trade-offs between efficiencies and production or input. In each quadrant we established boundary curves which represent the maximum achievable performances (yield, N uptake, N efficiency) when the input (here N fertilizer) is the only limiting factor. This framework has been tested on 432 “agronomic situations” (climatic year, previous crop and N rate) of Durum wheat in farmers' fields representative of the diversity of farmers practices in four regions of Tunisia. Results and Discussion - Nitrogen capture by Durum wheat is benchmarked against boundary curves that represent achievable nitrogen uptake when nitrogen supply is the only limiting factor (Fig 1.A).These boundary cu