Co-evolutionary mechanism for a cultivated land quality evaluation system based on the "concept-technology-model" tripartite framework

The scientific and standardized evaluation of cultivated land quality is a fundamental prerequisite for objectively characterizing regional land productivity, identifying targeted quality improvement pathways, and implementing precision full-cycle cultivated land management. In the context of national land spatial governance and cultivated land protection strategies, clarifying the evolutionary trajectory of China’s cultivated land quality evaluation systems is critical for optimizing subsequent evaluation frameworks. This study systematically investigates the constituent elements, historical evolution, and synergistic development mechanisms of China’s national cultivated land quality evaluation system. Adopting a long-term historical research perspective, this paper constructs a novel three-dimensional analytical framework labelled “evaluation concept—evaluation technology—evaluation model”. Based on extensive Chinese and international academic literature, industrial technical standards and national policy documents, we employ the literature induction method and holistic systematic analysis method to carry out qualitative and systematic research. The core research results are summarized as follows. The national cultivated land quality evaluation system is defined as a complex, dynamic and synergistic organic system with three core constituent elements: evaluation concept, evaluation technology and evaluation model. Among them, the evaluation concept plays a top-down guiding role, multi-source evaluation technology acts as the intermediate connecting bridge linking theory and practice, and quantitative evaluation model serves as the core operational carrier of the whole evaluation work. Each core element shows obvious staged evolutionary characteristics. The evaluation concept has gradually broken the limitation of single grain production orientation and evolved into a multi-dimensional comprehensive cognitive system that integrates natural ecological condition, economic production benefit and social public service functions of cultivated land. Evaluation technologies have experienced a complete transition from traditional artificial field investigation and empirical scoring to modern remote sensing monitoring and multi-source intelligent sensing technology. Evaluation models have evolved from simple basic mathematical calculation models and classical statistical regression models to complex machine learning and intelligent algorithm models. The spiral upward evolution of the whole evaluation system is driven by multiple external factors, including changing social land use demands, cross-domain technological breakthroughs, top-down national land policy guidance, and the continuous innovation of land resource management basic theories. There exists a clear “demand-empowerment” interactive relationship among the three internal elements; meanwhile, mutual positive promotion and negative constraint feedback loops are formed to restrict and balance the system operation. The synergistic operation mode of the system follows a clear staged evolutionary logic: it originates from the primary development stage dominated by national grain security production goals, develops into the middle stage of loose coupling among concept, technology and model, and eventually forms a stable closed-loop interactive synergistic system. This study concludes that the evolution of China’s cultivated land quality evaluation system is a typical multi-element collaborative and multi-dimensional dynamic iteration process. For future research and engineering application, researchers should focus on deepening the ecological cognition of land ecosystem life community, promoting the iteration of high-precision field intelligent sensing equipment, and constructing stable interpretable intelligent evaluation models, so as to realize deep fusion and coordinated sustainable development of the three core elements.The cultivated land quality evaluation system is poised to evolve into a critical component serving national strategies such as rural revitalization, food security, climate change adaptation, and the green transformation of agriculture.