The emerging high grain yield records and its technological and institutional innovation in China

China has made great achievements in ensuring food security over the past two decades. However, there is still a lack of empirical quantitative research on what has driven this progress. An innovative perspective is adopted in this study to reveal how the grain production frontier has evolved across space, technologies and institutional actors. We collected high-yield record reports from Bing, Baidu, WeChat Official Accounts and People.cn during 2010-2025. 405 analyzable record events were identified from 345 reports, and then the spatiotemporal evolution of those records, the driving technologies and institutional actors were quantified. The number of high-yield record events increased significantly at an average rate of 5.09 events per year, and proliferated after 2021. Spatially, events expanded from the Huang-Huai-Hai region towards Northwest China, while local clustering within hotspots strengthened. The key technical factors of records were improved varieties and optimized planting management, but the growth was increasingly attributed to combinations of integrated water-fertilizer management, chemical growth regulation and soil/tillage improvement. The key actor shifted from research institution-dominated records (53.7%) towards broader collaboration among government organizations, research institutions, agricultural enterprises and farmer operating entities (13.4%, 21.4% and 13.4%). Current progress is the result of the combined effects of technological integration and organizational synergy. However, there is a risk of overly rapid expansion in recent years. Future progress should focus less on extreme numerical records and more on translating validated high-yield pathways into scalable practices for large-area yield improvement.