Global crop phenological events of major crops

Using daily weather data for the period 1996–2005 as the inputs to a rule-based agro-climatic resources model, we derive the GPCW, a global dataset of crop phenological windows for maize, soybean, wheat and rice around the year 2000 with a spatial resolution of 0.5° in latitude and longitude. This dataset includes the average dates of sowing, emergence, maturity and harvesting as well as the average dates of silking for maize, flowering for soybean, heading and flowering for wheat, and transplanting, heading and flowering for rice. Distinctions are made between irrigated and rainfed conditions, winter and spring wheat, and single-, dry- and wet-season rice. The daily likelihoods of the occurence of crop phenological events available in the dataset can be converted into peak dates of the occurence of a crop phenological event of interest, with user-defined thresholds.