A global database of public agricultural R&D investment: 1960-2022

Abstract
Investment in public agricultural R&D is a key driver of agricultural productivity, which is regarded as one of the major solutions to enhance global food security, reduce the environmental impact of agricultural production and enhance crop resilience to climate change. Detailed information on public agricultural R&D investment is required to inform national science and technology policies that aim to improve the performance of the agricultural sector and monitor whether countries are on track to reach (inter)national targets. Due to the long lead-time, it requires exceptionally long time-series to assess the impact of public agricultural R&D spending on present and future agricultural productivity. To address these issues, this paper presents GRAPE - the WUR-ERS Global Research on Agriculture: Personnel & Expenditures dataset, which contains data on the number of public agricultural researchers and R&D expenditures for 190 countries, broadly covering the period 1960–2022. To construct the dataset, information from a large number of sources was combined, different R&D classifications were harmonized and missing data were imputed.

Keywords
R&D, agriculture, database, public research spending, long-term trends

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Michiel van Dijk acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme through the BrightSpace project (Grant Agreement No 101060075). The findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the authors and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy. The authors would like to express their gratitude to all data providers, statisticians and experts that shared data, knowledge and expertise to support the construction of GRAPE.

Cite this article

van Dijk, M., Fuglie, K., Heisey, P.W. et al. A global dataset of public agricultural R&D investment: 1960-2022. Sci Data 12, 1140 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-05331-y

Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted
use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

--------------------------------

Project information

BrightSpace Horizon Europe project Grant Agreement No. 101060075
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101060075
CALL: Innovative governance, environmental observations and digital solutions in support of the Green Deal
WORK PROGRAMME Topic ID: HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-12 EU agriculture within a safe and just operating space and planetary boundaries

BrightSpace Project coordination: Wageningen Economic Research, The Hague, NL
Contact: brightspace.wecr@wur.nl | Website: www.brightspace-project.eu

Project duration: 1 November 2022 – 31 October 2027

Funding acknowledgement

BrightSpace is funded by the European Union. Grant Agreement No. 101060075. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.