A century-long monitoring of rice plant height during growth period in central Taiwan

The temporal variations in the crop traits of rice, one of the major grain crops, are garnering increasing attention from agronomist, ecologists and conservation biologists. However, long-term datasets of rice plant height during growth period with consistent cropping method at the consistent research field are rather rare. Here we describe a dataset of rice plant height containing 24446 records for 20 rice cultivars collected from a research farm in central Taiwan between 1925 and 2024, spanning a century. The plant heights were collected during the growth period for two cropping seasons (cool and warm) a year. Taiwan has good-quality cultivars and climatic conditions suitable for rice growth, making it an ideal place to study rice growth. Our data can be used to understand the rice growth cycle, investigate the temporal changes of rice plant height, construct the crop growth model, and to understand temporal variations in rice plant height concerning climate change, environmental factors, and anthropogenic pressures among cultivars and cropping seasons.