2026 September-2 - 118 articles
Green foxtail (Setaria viridis) is a common orchard weed, but discrete element simulations of mowing operations lack geometric, contact, and flexible-connection parameters for its stems. This study measured the geometry and physical and contact prope...
Petroleum contamination of the fragile loess soils of Northern Shaanxi, China, calls for low-cost biological remediation strategies. Combining plants with soil macrofauna is a promising option, but it remains unclear whether the two agents act on the...
Water–nitrogen mismatch constrains stable and resource-efficient spring maize production in the eastern Loess Plateau. A two-year field experiment was conducted in Jinzhong, Shanxi Province, China, during 2024–2025. Supplemental irrigatio...
Cover crops are increasingly promoted to improve soil health, reduce nutrient losses, and enhance water quality, yet their large-scale performance across diverse climatic and soil conditions remains insufficiently quantified. We hypothesized that cer...
Phosphorus (P) limitation constrains crop production in highly weathered tropical soils, and microbial inoculants may enhance P acquisition, although their effectiveness varies with edaphic conditions. We hypothesized that the effects of a phosphate-...
Aiming at bottlenecks restricting straw-return resource utilization in global rice-planting regions, this study investigated soil microbial community structures of typical farmland soils from Guangdong Province in China. Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria...
This study evaluated the efficacy of basil essential oil (BEO), extracted from basil plants irrigated with ozonated water, as a sustainable strategy to control grey mould (Botrytis cinerea, Bc) in grapevine, Vitis vinifera cv. Sangiovese. Bunches wer...
Phosphorus (P) is essential for crop production, yet its use still follows a largely linear pathway: phosphate rock is mined, applied to agricultural land, transferred through food and waste systems, and often lost to rivers, lakes, and coastal water...
UAV multispectral imagery can support rice yield estimation, but spectral–yield relationships may change with cultivar and planting density. We evaluated three japonica rice cultivars under five planting-density treatments in a split-plot exper...
In situ nondestructive continuous monitoring of plant water status coupled with online data analysis is a core technical prerequisite for developing intelligent irrigation decision-making systems. The LPCP (leaf patch clamp pressure probe, ZIM-probe)...
The brown planthopper (BPH, Nilaparvata lugens) and white-backed planthopper (WBPH, Sogatella furcifera) are major rice pests, yet WBPH resistance and its overlap with BPH resistance remain poorly defined. Using the Rice Diversity Panel 1 (RDP1), scr...
Soil compaction is one of the main forms of physical soil degradation affecting agricultural productivity. Although its effects on soil structure and crop growth have been extensively investigated, their implications for irrigation management have re...
Multi-environment evaluation of yield performance and stability is essential for the rational recommendation of new cultivars. This study evaluated the elite winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivar Zhoumai 49—a third-generation descendant...
Field crops change continuously across growth stages, exhibit substantial spatial heterogeneity, and must be managed within short operational windows. This study presents a structured narrative review of information sensing and intelligent monitoring...
Cadmium (Cd) contamination in agricultural soils threatens food safety and human health. To address this issue, wood vinegar (WV) and high-density planting were combined in our field study. The results revealed that the combined application significa...
Water deficit is a major constraint on apple production in arid and semi-arid regions, and the selection of drought-adapted rootstocks is an effective strategy for improving orchard sustainability. This study evaluated the drought resistance of ten a...
Soil carbon dynamics in seasonal freeze–thaw zones reflect the interplay of two temporal regimes: high-frequency symmetric cycles driven by diurnal temperature fluctuations, and low-frequency asymmetric cycles with extended freezing and brief t...
Climate variability and recurrent spring drought increasingly affect cereal production in Central Europe, creating a need for field phenotyping methods that can detect crop responses before harvest. This study evaluated UAV-derived multispectral vege...
Gray mold (Botrytis cinerea Pers.) is a primary yield-limiting disease in European viticulture. Here we report a field evaluation of two chitosan oligomer (COS)-based nanocarrier (NC) systems loaded with Rubia tinctorum (NC-Rt) and Uncaria tomentosa...
This laboratory-scale study examined how soil particle-size distribution (PSD), especially the median diameter d50, affects slope runoff and sediment yield, and evaluated d50 as a simplified indicator for erosion prediction. Simulated-rainfall experi...
The global terrestrial carbon (C) cycle is intrinsically related to the management of agricultural ecosystems [...]
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) production faces significant challenges from environmental stresses, necessitating the identification of functional genes to enhance crop resilience. The DUF679 membrane protein (DMP) family has been recently recognized for its...
Crop straw is an abundant agricultural waste resource, but its lignocellulosic structure limits reuse. The fungus Aspergillus niger (ANG) can promote straw degradation and phosphorus (P) release. However, its degradation efficiency across different c...
Black soils are globally important for agricultural productivity, yet most studies of soil microbial communities are confined to the plow layer, leaving the deep regolith–bedrock interface largely unexplored. Here, we investigated bacterial div...
Rising volumes of agri-food waste highlight the need for innovative valorization strategies that simultaneously reduce environmental burdens and support sustainable agriculture. In this study, eggshell powder (ESP), spirulina powder (SP), and tannic...
Weed interference is a major constraint in the production of Angelica dahurica, where seedling–weed similarity, small target size, soil background variation, and occlusion make reliable field recognition difficult. This study develops a lightwe...
The cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera, is a major polyphagous agricultural pest that is notoriously difficult to control due to its broad host range, scattered oviposition, larval boring behavior, and strong resistance to both chemical insecticid...
To address the high labor intensity, low level of automation, and insufficient uniformity of spray coverage in plant protection operations for trellised crops in multi-span greenhouses, an autonomous spraying system based on magnetic navigation and R...
The black soil region of Northeast China is a major grain-producing area, where excessive nitrogen (N) fertilizer application is common in maize production. Optimizing N application rates and developing fertilization strategies that balance high yiel...
Soil salinization is a major constraint on peanut production. Here, we characterized the physiological and transcriptomic responses of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) seedlings exposed to 200 mM NaCl. Salt stress markedly inhibited plant growth, elevate...
Starch is a major chemical component of corn kernel powder and an important indicator of its processing quality, nutritional value, and commercial utilization. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) provides a rapid and non-destructive analytical approach...
Background: Straw return, as an important practice for soil improvement and nutrient recycling, has great potential for enhancing soil fertility and crop productivity. However, its yield-enhancing effects and the major driving factors remain unclear...
Idesia polycarpa Maxim. is a predominantly dioecious woody oil species valued for its oil-bearing fruits, bioactive metabolites, and distinctive reproductive biology. To provide an integrated understanding of its biological characteristics, resource...
To address the challenges of crop–weed instance segmentation and image-plane operation-point localization under visual similarity, background interference, leaf occlusion, and irregular plant morphology in cotton fields, a lightweight instance-...
Crumb texture is an essential attribute of bread quality, influencing perceptions of freshness and consumer acceptability. This study characterized the textural properties of wholemeal bread crumb—prepared without enzymes or preservatives&mdash...
Lesion-mimic mutants provide tractable systems for linking metabolic disruption to cell death and immunity in plants. OsPHD1 encodes a plastidial UDP-glucose/UDP-galactose 4-epimerase, and its disruption causes a lesion-mimic phenotype in the rice mu...
Ambrosia artemisiifolia L. (common ragweed, Asteraceae), native to North America, is a highly invasive weed causing substantial agricultural losses and serious human health problems due to its allergenic pollen. In several countries, legal regulation...
Accurate strawberry disease detection under complex field conditions is challenging because lesion appearance and scale vary considerably and disease regions are often affected by occlusion, illumination changes, and complex backgrounds. To improve f...
Traditional intercropping systems represent an economically feasible and sustainable strategy for the safe utilization of cadmium (Cd) contaminated farmland. To assess the safe production potential of a maize potato intercropping system in high-heolo...
Global water scarcity necessitates precision irrigation management to optimize the balance between yield, water productivity (WP), and fruit quality. This study employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the relationships between physiolo...
Argemone ochroleuca is an invasive alien weed that poses a significant threat to crop production through the release of phytochemicals associated with inhibiting seed germination in several crops. However, the phytochemical composition of A. ochroleu...
To clarify the yield benefits of biochar application in maize and soybean intercropping and its effects on rhizosphere microbial functions, a two-year field experiment was conducted in Putian, Fujian Province, China, from 2025 to 2026. The experiment...
White mustard (Sinapis alba L.) is a valuable crop for dryland agroecosystems, yet its productivity is strongly influenced by crop spatial configuration and hydrothermal variability, particularly under dry steppe conditions. Nevertheless, systematic...
Fruits play a vital role in global agriculture, yet the greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of orchard ecosystems remains poorly constrained due to the lack of integrated assessments of soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration and non-CO2 emissions. Given Ch...
In karst mountainous tobacco fields, white plastic mulch, bare rock, and weeds are spatially interspersed and can affect semantic segmentation accuracy in UAV RGB imagery. This study constructed seven background-composition scenarios from UAV RGB ort...
The journal retracts the article titled “Advances in Sweet Corn (Zea mays L [...]
Microplastics are an increasingly pervasive contaminant of agricultural soils, where they frequently co-occur with heavy metals such as nickel (Ni), an element still catalogued mainly as a pollutant yet now recognised as an essential plant micronutri...
Microbial inoculants are increasingly used in conservation agriculture to enhance soil biological functioning and crop performance, yet their field effectiveness remains variable. This study evaluated how soil resource status, extracellular enzyme ac...
Castor bean (Ricinus communis L.) is an important industrial oil crop worldwide. In China, western Jilin Province represents a major production region for this species, where spring drought severely constrains its yield and quality.This study aimed t...
To address redundant and tortuous paths generated for tracked mowers in unstructured orchard environments and the limited adaptability of fixed-gain controllers to nonuniform-curvature paths, this study proposes a joint optimization method combining...
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