Agriculture, Volume 15, Issue 20

Cadmium (Cd) contamination in agricultural soils originates mainly from atmospheric deposition, irrigation water, fertilizers, pesticides, and industrial waste discharges. This human-induced pollution adversely affects soil fertility and structure, d...

Model-based simulation of farmland evapotranspiration and crop growth facilitates precise monitoring of crop and farmland dynamics with high efficiency, real-time responsiveness, and continuity. However, there are still significant limitations in usi...

Against the backdrop of expanding off-farm employment, it is of great practical significance to examine how off-farm employment affects grain production and its underlying mechanisms, in order to build a more stable and sustainable national food secu...

External environmental changes, such as climate, industrial expansion, and population growth, threaten the sustainable development of the water–energy–food (WEF) system. Clarifying the intricate nonlinear relationships within this system...

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) affects chicken production not only during outbreaks but also afterward. Understanding its delayed effect is essential for facilitating timely production recovery. Employing a dynamic panel data model with ann...

To clarify the optimal water regulation strategy for spring wheat in arid areas, this study set up three irrigation methods [film-mulched drip irrigation (FD), non-mulched drip irrigation (ND), non-mulched subsurface drip irrigation (MD)] and five wa...

The paper describes an installation and procedure for evaluating the velocity profile for the airflow produced by the fan of the cleaning unit of a New Holland wheat combine harvester. The velocity profile is based on measurements taken at 52 points...

Laifeng ginger (Zingiber officinale cv. Fengtoujiang) is a famous Geographical Indication (GI) ginger variety, which grows specifically in Laifeng County, Hubei, China. In recent years, it faced a serious food safety issue of lead (Pb) exceedance in...

This study evaluated how various types of guar meal in diets of broiler chickens affect their rearing results, carcass composition, and liver histology. The experiment was conducted in one hundred sixty Ross 308 broilers randomly allocated to four gr...

The deployment of autonomous robots is critical for advancing sustainable agriculture, but their effectiveness hinges on visual perception systems that can reliably operate in natural, real-world environments. Selecting an appropriate vision model fo...

Collecting crop growth data in field environments is crucial for breeding research. The team’s current autonomous soybean phenotyping system requires manual control to start and stop data collection. To address the aforementioned issues, this s...

The quantification of genotype x environment interaction is essential for recommending high-yielding genotypes for both favorable and unfavorable environments, thereby increasing production. This study aimed to evaluate the agronomic performance of s...

Nondestructive quality detection of characteristic fruits is essential for ensuring nutritional value, economic viability, and consumer safety in global supply chains, yet traditional destructive methods compromise sample integrity and scalability. V...

Boll abscission in cotton (Gossypium spp.) is a key factor that limits yield; however, the molecular mechanisms underlying this process remain poorly understood. In this study, boll abscission characteristics were uncovered in four cotton varieties t...

Fire hazards during cotton picker operations pose a significant safety concern, primarily caused by cotton blockages and friction-induced heat generation between the picking spindle and seed cotton under high-load conditions. Existing fire monitoring...

Winter wheat covers approximately 2.21 × 10⁸ ha globally, making it the most widely cultivated cereal crop in the world. In recent years, integrated water and fertilizer management has significantly improved winter wheat yield and nitrogen use...

Sugarcane yield plays a crucial role in food safety and biofuel production, and it is strongly influenced by climatic variations. In this context, this study applies canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to identify the climatic predictors, such as se...

Cotton is increasingly important in global development. The exploration of drivers of spatiotemporal patterns for cotton planting, considering spatial heterogeneity, is essential for optimizing its distribution and supporting sustainable production....

This study identified that the absolute abundance of 15 types of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) across 21 organic fertilizer samples ranged between 1.15 × 10⁴ and 6.74 × 10¹⁰ copies/g, with sulfonamide ARGs and the intI1 gene exhibiti...

Wheat is an important crop in Rwanda; however, rapid population growth, urbanization, and shifting dietary preferences have driven demand far beyond domestic production capacity, resulting in a steady increase in imports. Closing this gap requires a...

Accurate evaluation of peanut seedling emergence is critical for ensuring agronomic research accuracy and planting benefit efficiency, but traditional manual methods are limited by strong subjectivity and inconsistent batch inspection standards. In o...

This paper evaluates the eco-efficiency of crop production in the European Union (EU) and the Republic of Serbia for the period 2015–2023, using a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model based on panel data. Eco-efficiency was assessed as the...

Water, energy, and food (WEF) constitute the core strategic resources essential for regional sustainable development, and the governance of the WEF system holds critical significance for the Central Area of the Yangtze River Delta (caYRD)—one o...

Soil organic matter (SOM) is a key component of nutrient cycling and soil fertility in terrestrial ecosystems. SOM is of great significance to the stability of terrestrial ecosystems and the improvement of soil productivity; to further exert its role...

Gene editing technologies, particularly CRISPR/Cas9, have revolutionized livestock genetics. They enable precise, efficient, and inheritable genome modifications. This review summarizes recent advances in the application of gene editing in livestock....

The pore structure of cocopeat-based substrates critically influences their hydraulic properties, directly affecting water use efficiency in soilless cultivation systems. Previous macroscopic modeling approaches infer pore structures indirectly from...

The use of biodegradable chelating agents and fertilizer to improve phytoremediation is a cost-effective and environmental-friendly method for remediation of copper (Cu)- and cadmium (Cd)-polluted agricultural soil. A pot experiment was conducted to...

Friction pairs in heavy-duty power-shift tractor wet clutches operate under complex conditions, making them vulnerable to damage and reducing reliability. Optimizing their tribological performance requires a trade-off between a high coefficient of fr...

Crop row detection technology, as one of the key technologies for agricultural robots to achieve autonomous navigation and precise operations, is related to the precision and stability of agricultural machinery operations. Its research and developmen...

The present study aimed to determine the Genotype × Environment interaction (GEI), yield stability, and agronomic performance of 24 “Pinto” bean lines under semi-arid conditions in Central-West Mexico. All the lines possess a slow-d...

A common drawback of denoising methods of images is that all pixels are filtered regardless of the amount of noise affecting them individually. Since the essence of denoising is lowpass filtering, subjecting clean pixels to denoising results in blurr...

Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) is an essential legume crop in Thailand, valued for its high protein content and economic significance. However, weed competition can reduce yields by up to 82% if not managed effectively. This study evaluates the eff...

This study investigates the biocontrol potential of Trichoderma asperellum and Coniothyrium minitans against the pathogen Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, which causes yield losses in many plants, including oilseed rape (Brassica napus) cultivation. This re...

Paddy fields are a key agricultural ecosystem for achieving carbon neutrality in southern China, with significant potential to sequester carbon and mitigate emissions of CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O. Film-covering is an emerging agricultural technique in rice p...

Productive and healthy soils are essential in agriculture and other economic uses of land which depend on plant growth, and are under increasing pressure globally. The physical properties of soil, its porosity and pore structure, also have a signific...

Due to the intensive cultivation of various crops, the surface soil layer is depleted. This leads to a decrease in fertility, losses of organic matter and nutrients, and an overall decrease in soil health. We aimed to investigate the role of green ma...

Accurate profiling of deep (20–300 cm) soil moisture is crucial for precision irrigation but remains technically challenging and costly at operational scales. We systematically benchmark eight regression algorithms—including linear regres...

Accurate numerical simulations of soil-tire interactions are essential for optimizing agricultural machinery to minimize soil compaction and enhance crop yield. This study developed and compared two approaches for identifying and validating parameter...

It is well established that exposure to heat-stress conditions significantly impacts the physiology, health, welfare, and productivity of both sheep and cattle. The aim of this study was to apply the Temperature Humidity Index (THI) in order to asses...

Silicon (Si), a beneficial element accumulated by rice (Oryza sativa L.), enhances productivity and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Fragrance, primarily driven by 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (2AP), is a key trait in premium rice markets. This stud...

Within the context of sustainable exploitation of phytogenetic resources, the present study aimed to develop species-specific seed germination protocols for eighteen native and potentially underutilized plant species originating from northeastern Gre...

In the face of increasing climate variability, understanding the dynamics of plant-to-plant interactions within crops is becoming increasingly important. This study aimed to examine plant responses to varying intensities of inter-plant competition, i...

To address the issues of high stalk breakage rate and the mismatch between extraction force and operational speed in current horizontal shaft counter-rolling cotton stalk pullers, this study presents a novel clamping mechanism. The mechanism enables...

To address the prominent issues in current potato peeling processes (such as high labor intensity, excessive flesh loss, hard-to-remove peel from bud eyes/concaves), a non-contact waterjet method was proposed. Based on the computational fluid dynamic...

Cotton production faces sustainability challenges due to the lack of effective sustainable defoliants for mechanical harvesting, which constrains the expansion of organic cotton (currently 0.5% of global production). In this framework, this study eva...

With the increasing demand for sustainable food production, the facility agriculture is progressively developing towards automation and intelligence. Traditional control techniques such as PID, fuzzy logic, and model predictive control have been wide...

To address the difficult problem of maintaining profitable and resilient agriculture under a changed climate, long-term prediction and planning are needed. One approach capable of helping with this endeavour is mathematical modelling and optimisation...

Against the backdrop of global climate change intensifying seasonal freeze–thaw cycles, deteriorating soil conditions in farmland within seasonal frost zones constrain agricultural sustainability. This study employed an in situ field experiment...

The resource utilization of swine manure represents a critical pathway for advancing sustainable agricultural development. This study, based on survey data from 509 swine farmers in Sichuan Province, employs the Ordered Probit (Oprobit) model and the...

Agritourism is increasingly recognized as a driver of sustainable rural development, yet research has often focused on ecological and economic outcomes while neglecting the human capital that sustains service quality. This study introduces the concep...