Abstract:Prime cropland construction is helpful for the protection of cultivated land and national food security. Most previous studies were focused on the natural quality of cultivated land, while the locational condition, stability and spatial agglomeration pattern was far from totally understood which reduced the rationality and resulted in frequently adjustment of prime cropland, and also could restrict the development space of urban and rural. A comprehensive evaluation indicator system of cultivated land was constructed by selecting 11 indicators from the aspects of natural condition, locational condition and stability. Based on the evaluation of cultivated land, the local indicators of spatial autocorrelation method was applied to identify the spatial agglomeration pattern of cultivated land quality. Furthermore,the matrix grouping method was applied to classify the type of prime cropland. The score of location condition of cultivated land was higher than that of natural condition and stability. The high quality and relative high quality were the dominant type in Ji’nan, which occupied 35.12% and 22.67% respectively and mainly distributed in the north of Ji’nan, such as Shanghe, Jiyang and Zhangqiu. The area of the lowquality cultivated land was only 47598km2, accounting for 11.98% and mainly located in Licheng and Changqing. Consequently, the cultivated land in Ji’nan was classified into three types, which was priority type, suitable type and reserve type. The cultivated land distributed in Jiyang, Shanghe, north of Zhangqiu, southeast of Pingyin had high quality and significant cluster pattern which were classified into priority type. The cultivated land area of priority type was 212123km2, accounting for 5338% of the total cultivated land area of Ji’nan. The quality of suitable type was also high, and most were distributed around the priority type. Besides, the suitable type had a role of protection and buffering for the priority type. Thus, it should be classified into prime cropland together with the priority type in order to improve the concentration of highquality prime cropland. The area of the reserve type was the least as 98898km2. It was mainly distributed in downtown and the southern mountains. The quality and concentration were relative lower. The development and utilization of reserve type should pay attention to the protection of the ecological environment.