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Innovative Agricultural Technologies and Practices for Improving Crop Physiology, Productivity...
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Innovative Agricultural Technologies and Practices for Improving Crop Physiology, Productivity and Quality

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Physiology and Crop Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 29 August 2024 | Viewed by 1787

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Yousef Alhaj Hamoud

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Interests: soil, water, and plant relations; irrigation and water use; smart, chemical nano, and bio-fertilizers; plant physiology; crop yield and quality; hydrogel applications in agriculture; soil amendment; soil remediation; ecotoxicology; environmental pollution; chemigation, fertigation, and salinization of soil
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Hiba Shaghaleh

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Environment, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Interests: biopolymers; nanomaterials; hydrogel applications in agriculture; soil pollution and remediation; heavy metals; smart, chemical, and bio-fertilizers; plant biochemistry; crop quality; soil amendment; ecotoxicology; environmental safety
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Tingting Chang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Agricultural Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Interests: Soil health and quality; soil remediation; land cover crops; manure/organic fertilizer/poultry litter; soil and water conservation; irrigation; drainage; soil amendment; crop production.
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Agriculture is challenged by food security and environmental safety. Meanwhile, water scarcity is growing increasingly due to climate change and environmental contamination, affecting cropping systems' productivity. Thus, cropping systems should include innovative strategies that consider crop responses to soil/water environment changes.

Soil is the key factor that determines any crop's success. Therefore, recent studies have employed approaches that enhance soil quality. For example, adding biochar, nanoparticles, bio-polymer composite materials, and nanomaterials to soil has great potential for soil remediation and fertility improvement, thus enhancing plant tolerance to different environmental stresses and improving crop productivity and quality. Furthermore, applying organic matter and biofertilizers to soils has been proposed as a feasible agricultural practice. Crop residue return to soil is also considered a novel approach to sustain cropping systems. Moreover, different irrigation management strategies should be developed to cope with the water shortage and ensure food safety.

Soil–plant–water interactions regulate plant growth physiology, and superior growth leads to higher crop production. The physiological responses of plants are also varied with soil/water environmental variations and stimulated by the availability of water and nutrients in the soil. However, the growth attributes of plants and their relations to the productivity and quality of crops, along with emerging agricultural technologies and practices, are not fully understood.

This Special Issue will focus on novel agricultural technologies and practices for improving crop physiology, productivity, and quality. This Special Issue will also emphasize the benefits of these novel technologies and practices for enhancing soil properties, crop physiology, and crop quality attributes. We invite researchers and experts to contribute with original research, reviews, and opinion pieces covering all topics related to green practice technologies for sustainable crop production. Authors are welcome to contribute reviews and articles on the most important aspects of cropping systems, including approaches that target improving crop production and enhancing soil quality and water productivity under the changing climate.

Dr. Yousef Alhaj Hamoud
Dr. Hiba Shaghaleh
Dr. Tingting Chang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • innovative agricultural technologies and practices
  • sustainable crop production
  • crop physiology, productivity, and quality
  • climate change
  • soil amendments
  • biomaterials, nanomaterials, and smart materials
  • fertilizers
  • crop residue
  • soil pollution and remediation
  • irrigation management

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 2052 KiB  
Article
The Concurrent Application of Phosphogypsum and Modified Biochar as Soil Amendments Influence Sandy Soil Quality and Wheat Productivity
by Mohssen Elbagory, Eman M. Shaker, Sahar El-Nahrawy, Alaa El-Dein Omara and Tamer H. Khalifa
Plants 2024, 13(11), 1492; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13111492 - 28 May 2024
Viewed by 287
Abstract
Sandy soil covers a significant portion of Egypt’s total land area, representing a crucial agricultural resource for future food security and economic growth. This research adopts the hypothesis of maximizing the utilization of secondary products for soil improvement to reduce ecosystem pollution. The [...] Read more.
Sandy soil covers a significant portion of Egypt’s total land area, representing a crucial agricultural resource for future food security and economic growth. This research adopts the hypothesis of maximizing the utilization of secondary products for soil improvement to reduce ecosystem pollution. The study focuses on assessing the impact of combining phosphogypsum and modified biochar as environmentally friendly soil amendments on loamy sand soil quality parameters such as soil organic carbon, cation exchange capacity, nutrient levels, and wheat yield. The treatments were T1: the recommended NPK fertilizer (control); T2: 2.5 kg phosphogypsum m−2 soil; T3: 2.5 kg rice straw biochar m−2 soil; T4: 2.5 kg cotton stalk biochar m−2 soil; T5: 2.5 kg rice-straw-modified biochar m−2 soil; T6: 2.5 kg cotton-stalk-modified biochar m−2 soil; and T7 to T10: mixed phosphogypsum and biochar treatments. The results revealed that the combined use of phosphogypsum and modified cotton stalk biochar (T10) significantly enhanced soil organic carbon (SOC) by 73.66% and 99.46% in both seasons, the soil available N both seasons by 130.12 and 161.45%, the available P by 89.49% and 102.02%, and the available K by 39.84 and 70.45% when compared to the control treatment. Additionally, this treatment led to the highest grain yield of wheat (2.72 and 2.92 Mg ha−1), along with a significant increase in straw yield (52.69% and 59.32%) compared to the control treatment. Overall, the findings suggest that the combined use of phosphogypsum and modified biochar, particularly cotton-stalk biochar, holds promise for improving loamy sand-soil quality and wheat productivity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovative Agricultural Technologies and Practices for Improving Crop Physiology, Productivity and Quality)
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18 pages, 2946 KiB  
Article
Biochar Enhances the Resistance of Legumes and Soil Microbes to Extreme Short-Term Drought
by Kang He, Qiangbo Liu, Jialei Zhang, Guanchu Zhang and Guolin Li
Plants 2023, 12(24), 4155; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12244155 - 13 Dec 2023
Viewed by 1030
Abstract
Short-term drought events occur more frequently and more intensively under global climate change. Biochar amendment has been documented to ameliorate the negative effects of water deficits on plant performance. Moreover, biochar can alter the soil microbial community, soil properties and soil metabolome, resulting [...] Read more.
Short-term drought events occur more frequently and more intensively under global climate change. Biochar amendment has been documented to ameliorate the negative effects of water deficits on plant performance. Moreover, biochar can alter the soil microbial community, soil properties and soil metabolome, resulting in changes in soil functioning. We aim to reveal the extent of biochar addition on soil nutrients and the soil microbial community structure and how this improves the tolerance of legume crops (peanuts) to short-term extreme drought. We measured plant performances under different contents of biochar, set as a gradient of 2%, 3% and 4%, after an extreme experimental drought. In addition, we investigated how soil bacteria and fungi respond to biochar additions and how the soil metabolome changes in response to biochar amendments, with combined growth experiments, high-throughput sequencing and soil omics. The results indicated that biochar increased nitrites and available phosphorus. Biochar was found to influence the soil bacterial community structure more intensively than the soil fungal community. Additionally, the fungal community showed a higher randomness under biochar addition when experiencing short-term extreme drought compared to the bacterial community. Soil bacteria may be more strongly related to soil nutrient cycling in peanut agricultural systems. Although the soil metabolome has been documented to be influenced by biochar addition independent of soil moisture, we found more differential metabolites with a higher biochar content. We suggest that biochar enhances the resistance of plants and soil microbes to short-term extreme drought by indirectly modifying soil functioning probably due to direct changes in soil moisture and soil pH. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovative Agricultural Technologies and Practices for Improving Crop Physiology, Productivity and Quality)
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