Abstract: Rice is the most important food crop in China. The development and innovation of rice cultivation and rice cropping system have profound influence on the rice production in our country. There are 4 stages in the development of rice cultivation in China: the first stage was in the last 50's that researchers carried on the investigation, summary, and research of the model farmers’ experience and started to make the comprehensive fundamental research of high-yielding production in rice cultivation; the second stage was in the last 60's that researchers had mainly revolved in solving the serious problem in rice population and matter production , developing single technology of high production for rice cultivation; The third stage was from the last 70's to the last 80's that researchers had revolved in researching in the pattern, target, and standardization of rice growth, successfully establishing “the rice cultivation methods of leave age model”; The fourth stage was from last 80's to now that the technology of planting sparsely for dry-based rice seedling from the Japanese, the rice high production population quality index and the optimized control cultivation technology from Jiangsu province, both of them were extended widely in planting rice area. In our country, the rice cultivation was changed from the single item technology to compound forms and integrated technology of many high production cultivation measure superimposition, the rice cropping system was changed from increasing the multiple cropping index to approaching the cropping pattern of good quality and high benefit multiplex and sustainable system. Finally, the paper has discussed in the innovation and development tendency of rice cultivation and cropping system in our country: (1) application of the information and computer technology; (2) application of the theory of circular economy; (3) application of the agricultural machinery; (4) application of the conservation tillage techniques; (5) application of optimization for compound cropping system of multiple members.

Key words: Rice (Oryza sativa L.) , Cultivation , Paddy field , Cropping system