Century-Scale Crop Yield and Agronomic Trait Evolution in China, 22,017 Records

22,017 records from 802 sites and 504 studies across China over the past century, compiled by Xinyu Ding. The dataset covers five major crops and includes variables such as yields, agronomic traits, and field management practices. It was last updated in April 2026 and serves as a foundation for crop modeling and food security research.

Use Cases

• Modeling crop yield trends based on century-scale temporal data and georeferenced records.
• Assessing the impact of field management practices like fertilizer application and tillage on yield gaps.
• Analyzing the evolution of soil fertility and variety characteristics under different breeding strategies.
• Investigating maximum potential yield for major crops under ideal conditions for sustainability studies.

Strengths

• Contains 22,017 records from 802 sites and 504 studies, providing a substantial observational base.
• Includes 56 variables covering yields, agronomic traits, management practices, and variety characteristics.
• Each record is georeferenced and time-specific, supporting spatial and temporal trend analysis.
• Focuses on long-term experiments over a century-scale period for five major crops.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific modeling tasks.
• Data may reflect geographic or temporal bias inherent to the compiled studies from figshare.

Provenance

Source

Xinyu Ding via figshare.

Collection Method

Compilation of records from 504 studies, likely from long-term field experiments.

Time Range

Covers the past century.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-29 21:35:18; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Sites across China.