Publishing Agricultural Data from the Morrow Plots: The Value and Logistics of Preserving a Long-Term Research Experiment

The Morrow Plots at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are the longest-running continuous experimental agricultural fields in the Americas. At iPres 2022 we reported on work to curate, preserve, and visualize planting, treatment, and yield data collected from the plots' nearly 150-year history. This paper provides an update on these efforts over the past year and, with special emphasis on the data’s scientific and cultural value, discusses the importance of collaborative and interdisciplinary work within the Morrow Plots stakeholder community to publish the dataset, and identify necessary next steps.