Fifty-five years of yield improvement for cucumber, melon, and watermelon in the United States

Yield data for the major cucurbit crops in the United States have been collected and summarized. Yield trends are presented for cucumber (Cucumis sativus, processing and fresh-market), melon (Cucumis melo; muskmelon and honeydew), and watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) for the period 1951-2005. Data have been obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as originally reported by six of its units: Agricultural Marketing Service, Agricultural Research Service, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Economic Statistics Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service, and Statistical Reporting Service. For all crops yields have been increasing over time, except for processing cucumber, for which yields seem to have reached a plateau by the end of the 1990s.