History: The crop science program at Yangzhou University was established in 1902 by Zhang Jian, a famous industrialist and educator. In the early 1960s, graduate students were admitted, and in the early 1980s, the master education program was officially approved. In the year 2000, the doctoral education program was officially approved in the first class discipline of crop science, and in 2003, the post-doctoral workshop was established. Since 1986, two secondary disciplines of crop cultivation and farming system and crop genetics, as well as cross-disciplinary agricultural product quality and safety have been selected as provincial key disciplines. In 2007, crop cultivation and farming system was selected as National Key Disciplines. In 2009, the discipline won the national first-level discipline construction site in Jiangsu Province. In 2010 and 2014, it was successively funded by the first and second phases of provincial priority academic program development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions. The crop science program is now affiliated to the China Crop Society Cultivation Committee.

Research directions: The crop science program focuses on crop variety improvement and high-yield, high-quality and high-efficiency production, with a combination of basic research and applied research, adjuncts fields in crop genetics and breeding, crop cultivation and farming system, and crop physiology. It has four feature research directions, namely, crop elite-gene functional analysis and implementation, crop breeding theory and new variety selection, efficient and green crop production technology, and crop production safety. It has established new program growth point in global environmental change biology, digital farming technology and efficient utilization of agricultural resources.

Ranking: Agricultural science, and plant and animal science have entered the top 1% of ESI in the world. So far, Agricultural science has jumped to the top 0.52%. In the report of “China Alumni Association University Research Team 2014”, Chinese regional university program rankings, the crop science program from Yangzhou University was selected as Chinese four-star program, being one of the 2014 China's high-level programs. In recent years, the crop science program is in the stage of high-quality development. In the fourth round of program evaluation by the Ministry of Education in 2017, the crop science program was rated as B⁺, an update from the 11^th in the last round evaluation to the current 9^th.

Program Platform: The crop science program proudly owns the Joint Laboratory of International Cooperation on Agriculture and Agricultural Products Safety of the Ministry of Education, the Key Laboratory of Plant Functional Genomics of the Ministry of Education, the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Physiology of Jiangsu Province, the Key Laboratory of Crop Cultivation Physiology of Jiangsu Province, the Key Laboratory of Crop Genomics and Molecular Breeding of Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center for Modern Production Technology of Grain Crops, Science and Technology Department of Jiangsu Yangzhou National Science and Technology Commissioner Training Base, and Yangtze River Basin Rice Technology Innovation Center of the Ministry of Agriculture. The establishment of these platforms has laid a solid foundation for academic training and scientific research in various research directions in the crop science program.

Faculty Team: The crop science program has 43 professors, 27 associate professors, 20 junior and intermediate level technicians, including 1 academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 1 fellowship of Australian Academy of Science, 2 national talents, and 1 national leader of the “Millions of Plan”, 3 outstanding young and middle-aged national experts, 1 national “outstanding youth fund” winner, 2 national agricultural experts in the "973" program, 2 outstanding agricultural scientific research talents and innovation teams, and national outstanding food crop production experts, grand experts for contribution to agricultural science and technology, China Agriculture Talent Award, Ho Liang Ho Lee Science and Technology Progress Award, China Crop Society Science and Technology Achievement Award, national outstanding science and technology workers,  8 Jiangsu Province 333 project second and third level talent, There are 3 winners of the Outstanding Youth Fund of Jiangsu Province; 2 agricultural research and innovation teams of the Ministry of Agriculture, 5 outstanding scientific and technological innovation teams of Provincial universities, and 3 Provincial modern agricultural industrial technology innovation teams.

Education: The education quality of the crop science program is continuously improved. The crop science program has won first prize of Provincial Teaching Achievement Award, one 2^nd prize of Jiangsu Provincial Graduate Training Model Reform Achievement; three national excellent doctoral thesis nominations, six provincial excellent doctoral thesis, six provincial excellent master thesis, eight times winning the nationwide challenge cup first prize of the extracurricular academic and scientific works competition for college students. Agronomy major was selected as the national excellent major, and selected into the “Twelfth Five-year plan” comprehensive reform pilot project of the Ministry of Education (also known as the national key program), as well as the pilot major for the excellent agricultural and forestry talent training model reform and the first-class construction project for the first-grade brand major project of Jiangsu universities. Three national quality courses of crop cultivation, biostatistics and experimental design, and plant physiology are all selected into national-level elite resource sharing courses. One training base for agricultural science and education cooperation talents of the Ministry of Education is affiliated to the crop science program.

Scientific research: The crop science program closely adheres on the whole industrial chain of crop production, and has successively created the crop leaf age model, the genetic model of the triploid endosperm, the source and sink regulation, the crop population quality and controls. The crop science program has won 9 “National Scientific and Technological Progress Award”, 1 “National Natural Science Award”, and 20 provincial first-class science and technology progress awards. The precise sequencing of the fourth chromosome of rice was completed and won the top ten national science and technology news in 2002. Since the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", the program has undertaken the national "Twelfth Five-Year" Science and Technology Support Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Public Welfare Industry (Agriculture) Research Project, the National "973" program, and National R&D Project of Transgenic Crops,  more than 800 provincial and ministerial level projects and projects (National Natural Science Foundation) , and over 280 millions  RMB research funding were received. More than 300 SCI papers are published; 8 new varieties of rice, wheat, corn and other crops are released. The key core technical achievements have been promoted and applied in large-scale production in our province and the whole country, and have made significant contributions to China's grain production. The crop science program promotes the application of scientific and technological achievements. In the 1980s, the “Crop Age Model and Technology” was applied in Jiangsu Province and extended to the whole country. In the 1990s, “Crop Population Quality Theory and Technology” was applied in Jiangsu Province and the whole country. In recent years, “Crop Precision Quantitative Cultivation Techniques” was promoted in Jiangsu Province and the whole country. These achievements have been recognized by the Ministry of Agriculture as the major contributing technology throughout the country. The application area of each improvement exceeds 6.7 million ha, which has yielded huge social and economic benefits."

Global Collaboration: The crop science program has established stable cooperative research relationships with more than 30 universities/research institutes such as the University of California, the University of Tokyo, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the International Rice Research Institute of the Philippines, as well as many prominent universities and research institutes in China. The crop science program has established important platforms including "China Yangzhou University-Canada Agriculture and Agri-Food Joint Laboratory for Agricultural Sciences", "Yangzhou University-Thailand Agricultural University Crop Science Joint Research Center", and the multilateral joint laboratories of "Agriculture and Agricultural Products Safety International Cooperation". Significant achievement in international talent training and scientific research has been generated through the program.