A Functional trait database of arable weeds from Eurasia and North Africa

The functional traits of arable weeds in Eurasia and North Africa database contains functional trait values for specific leaf area, canopy height, canopy diameter, leaf area per node thickness, vegetative propagation, and plant life history for 928 arable weed species. The number of accessions used to calculate the trait values are provided. The data was collected up until 2021 from locations around Europe, Western Asia and North Africa, with minor collections in other parts of Eurasia (e.g., Japan), in order to characterise species growing as arable weeds in cereal and pulse crops managed under traditional agricultural regimes (that is, organically, without chemical fertilisers and herbicides, and in some cases minimal mechanisation) in these regions. This database iteration is version 1. The data are used by the R package WeedEco[1] to assign functional trait values to inputted species from archaeobotanical samples or other sources, allowing comparison through discriminant to three arable regime models. Details on the use of the R package can be found in Stroud et al.[2] Full details regarding the methods used for data collection and calculations will be available in a data paper published at a later date. References: [1] Stroud, E., Charles, M., Hodgson, J., Jones, G., and Bogaard, A. (2023). WeedEco: Classification of unknown cases using linear discriminant analysis to understand farming regimes. R package version 1.0.0, https://github.com/WeedEco/WeedEco [2] Stroud, E., Charles, M., Hodgson, J., Jones, G., and Bogaard, A. (accepted) See the fields through the weeds: introducing the WeedEco R package for comparing past and present arable farming systems using functional weed ecology. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.