China's Life Cycle Assessment Research in Crop Farming: Development and Challenges

• 148 articles published over 20 years in SSCI and SCI-EXPANDED are retrieve. • 6 topics might serve as the potential research hotspots in the following years. • Common steps in LCA approaches for Chinese crop farming are summaried. • Institutional cooperation is vital to the development of LCI and data collection. • A systematic guidance for the life cycle assessment of a perennial cropping system is urgently demanded. The products and by-products of crop farming are one of the critical sources of feedstocks for manufacturing. Therefore, the extent and depth of life cycle assessment (LCA) research in crop farming would significantly influence the development and construction of a nation's LCA framework. To promote the development of LCA work in China's crop farming, this study filtered 148 papers published from 2003 to 2023 for a bibliometric analysis, and compared some of the datasets of crop products in from four LCA databases, thereby describing research development and hotspots of Chinese LCA research of crop farming. From descriptive statistical data, the number and quality of publications in this field generally showed an increasing trend, indicating the emphasis from Chinese government. From the filtering process and performance analysis, five clusters could be identified. Optimization of agricultural management and improvement of smallholder farming systems were the major hotspots. However, the data quality and gathering process of life cycle inventory (LCI) have deficiencies. Simplistic environmental impact category is also an obstacle to improving Chinese agricultural LCA studies. As for the database, the uneven distribution of crop types in available LCI datasets leaves substantial research gaps. Temporal, climatic, geographic and methodological variations complicate the integration of information. To solve these problems in future development, establishing a standardized LCA template through cooperation among related organizations could offer a viable scheme.