Dr. Robert J. Lascano Appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Agricultural Water Management” in Agriculture

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Robert J. Lascano has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Agricultural Water Management” in Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472, IF 2.925).

Dr. Robert J. Lascano is a Research Leader for the Wind Erosion and Water Conservation Unit, Cropping Systems Research Laboratory, USDA-ARS, Lubbock, TX. He holds a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in soil physics from Texas A&M University (1983). Prior to joining the USDA-ARS in 2008, he was a Professor of Soil Physics at the Texas A&M University. He currently directs a research program for a unit with seven scientists working towards the development of agronomic management practices that mitigate the effects of wind-induced soil erosion and limited water availability on crop yield under variable weather conditions. He is the author of more than 150 papers and has supervised 8 post-doctoral Research Associates and the graduate studies of more than 20 students. His teaching activities included courses on soil-plant-water relationships and soil physics. He has held numerous editorial positions within the Agronomy and is a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy.

The following is a short Q&A with Dr. Robert J. Lascano, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?

A new model for the dissemination of research results in peer-reviewed journals includes open access to the readers and a rapid turnaround of the submitted manuscripts while maintaining a high standard of review in the publication process. The journal Agriculture has all of these attributes, and thus, my decision to assume the role of Section Editor-in-Chief was facilitated.

2. Can you briefly introduce your current research work in agricultural water management?

Water is the common denominator in many phases of crop production and the management of this resource is key to maximizing crop yield. The Texas High Plains is in a unique position where the two sources of water, irrigation, and rain, are variable. Irrigation water from aquifers is diminishing, rainfall is highly variable, and droughts are common. This semiarid region provides us with a large-scale landscape where we can conduct multidisciplinary research to characterize the energy and water balance of dryland and limited-irrigation cropping systems. Our current research aims to develop crop management strategies that enhance water use efficiency; to develop a framework of methods and models to quantify and study the risks associated with water from rainfall for dryland agriculture, and to evaluate management practices to increase soil water availability and to contribute to higher water and nutrient use efficiencies.

3. What is your vision for the journal?

My vision is to maintain the rigorous standard of the review process and to support the general scope of Agriculture. This journal provides a platform whereby an author knows that they have access to a journal that will reach a wide audience and do not have to wait for an extended period of time to publish submitted manuscripts. Furthermore, speeding up the review process does not compromise the quality of the published articles. Agriculture is an international journal and of interest to readers is to see how problems in one region are approached and solved and the transferability of those solutions to other locations. Problems in agriculture are general, but solutions are site-specific.

4. What does the future of this field of research look like?

Agricultural research is using digital technologies to collect experimental data at an unprecedented rate at the spatial and temporal scales. This trend will continue, and authors will need to share collected data while maintaining ownership. Additionally, we have gravitated from traditional small plot replicated to large-scale landscape experiments. This transition includes the application of precision agriculture methods, data collection using drones, data analysis using spatial statistics, the application of three-dimensional simulation models, and metadata analysis. The future of this research will continue to involve a multi-disciplinary approach, incorporating and adopting the many tools that are available to measure in situ soil and plant variables to characterize the fate of water in soil-plant systems.

5. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?

Open access is the future of the publishing field. Nowadays, with access via the Internet to databases such as Scopus, SCIE, PubAg, Google Scholar, and others, readers have access to any article that has a Digital Object Identifier (doi). The tools that a reader needs to access a published article are simply a smartphone, tablet, or computer with Internet access.

We warmly welcome Dr. Robert J. Lascano as the Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Agricultural Water Management”, and we look forward to achieving many milestones under his leadership.

For further information on the journal's Sections, please visit the following link:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture/sections.