Selenium is an essential micronutrient for the human body, playing a crucial role in maintaining the normal physiological functions. It has multiple important physiological functions such as antioxidation, cardiovascular protection, immunity enhancement, and cancer prevention. Considering the current situation of widespread selenium deficiency in Chinese soil, the human body needs to supplement selenium through food. Applying selenium to crops to convert it into organic selenium is a safe and economically feasible way to supplement selenium. This study aims to comprehensively and systematically evaluate the effects of selenium application on the yield and quality improvement of rice, wheat, and maize in China,so as to provide a solid theoretical basis for scientific and rational selenium application. The field experiment papers related to the effects of selenium application on rice, wheat and maize published in CNKI, VIP, Wanfang, Web of Science and PubMed databases from 2013 to 2024 were collected. Using "selenium", "wheat/maize/rice", "yield" and other words as Keywords, 134 literatures were included according to strict screening criteria. The natural logarithm of the response ratio was used as the effect value for Meta-analysis, and various software were used for data processing and analysis. Overall, selenium application increased the yield of rice, wheat and maize by 5.41%. The yield increase of wheat and rice was significant, while that of maize was not obvious. The selenium content in grains increased by 164.09%, and the effect of increasing the selenium content in maize grains was the best. The quality improvement effect of grain starch content was 2.39%, and only that of maize was significant. There was a positive effect on the quality improvement of grain protein content, and that of maize was the most significant. Different crops showed different performances under the influence of factors such as selenium application methods, regions and soil selenium content.Selenium application has an impact on the yield, selenium content, starch and protein content of the three crops. It is an effective means to improve crop quality and yield. However, it is necessary to optimize the selenium application strategy according to crop types, regions and soil conditions to ensure human selenium nutrition intake and high-quality and high-yield agriculture.