Crop production with intensive water use is burdening global water resources system. From the perspective of production, this study focuses on investigating world's water challenge from crop cultivation based on a 26-yr multi-scale analysis. Blue water footprint (BWF) dynamics covering 146 crops over 180 countries are examined during 1992–2017, applying a fast-track based BWF assessment and a modified dynamic decomposition analysis (DDA). Results show that global crop BWF has increased by 10.8% during 1992–2017 with increased growth rate after 2002, indicating rising water pressure from crop farming. About three-fifths of world's regions/nations have grown crop BWFs, especially in Southeast Asia, Oceania, and North-Central-West Africa (grown by over 30% each). Absolute changing rates of national crop BWFs trend to increase along with the decrease of population and BWF scales, with developing countries presenting large crop BWF increases, especially India, Pakistan, and Egypt (> 9 billion m³ each). The crop BWF growths come mainly from the farming of fruits, cereals, and sugar crops, with contribution proportions of 32.4%, 19.6%, and 12.8%, respectively. Decomposition results show that world's growing crop BWF is dominantly driven by population (27.5%) and yield-improving technology (24.8%) while water-saving technology (-24.8%) and proportion of rural population (-18.9%) contribute to offsetting the BWF growth. Efforts towards water sustainable cropping should be made in technological development and planting structure adjustment, especially in those countries with high or largely grown BWFs. Based on these, we expect to provide useful and informative findings for building a better water conservation system on earth.

大量用水的作物生产给全球水资源系统增加了负担。从生产的角度出发，本研究着重于基于26年的多尺度分析，调查作物种植对世界水资源的挑战。在1992年至2017年期间，采用了基于快速通道的BWF评估和改进的动态分解分析（DDA），研究了覆盖180个国家/地区的146种作物的蓝色足迹（BWF）动态。结果显示，1992-2017年间，全球农作物BWF增长了10.8％，而2002年之后的增速有所提高，表明农作物的水压上升。世界大约五分之三的国家/地区已经种植了农作物BWF，特别是在东南亚，大洋洲和中西非（分别增长30％以上）。每个³个）。作物BWF的增长主要来自水果，谷类和糖料作物的种植，贡献率分别为32.4％，19.6％和12.8％。分解结果表明，世界上生长的农作物BWF主要受人口（27.5％）和增产技术（24.8％）的驱动，而节水技术（-24.8％）和农村人口的比例（-18.9％）有助于抵消BWF。 BWF的增长。应当在技术发展和种植结构调整方面努力实现水的可持续种植，特别是在生物安全系数较高或高度增长的国家。基于这些，我们希望为在地球上建立更好的节水系统提供有用和有益的发现。