Announcements

Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472) is an international and cross-disciplinary scholarly journal on agriculture, published monthly online by MDPI. Agriculture is recruiting Editorial Board Members whose research interests are related to the science and technology of crop and animal production, biosecurity, and postharvest handling of produce, agricultural technology, management of the natural resource base for agricultural production (land, soil and water), rural management and agricultural development, and agriculture in changing environments. Please find more details at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture/sections.

We already have some highly renowned experts on our Editorial Board, and we are looking for more excellent scholars in this field to join us. If you are interested in this position or know of any potential candidates you would like to recommend, please contact the Agriculture Editorial Office (agriculture@mdpi.com). 

The main responsibilities of Editorial Board Members are as follows: 

• Pre-screening submissions and making decisions on whether a manuscript should be accepted or rejected for processing, as well as suggesting additional reviewers if necessary;
• Acting as Guest Editor of a Special Issue in your particular field of expertise, or recommending potential topics and Guest Editors;
• Promoting Agriculture and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• Advising on the journal’s development.

 We look forward to hearing from you. 

Agriculture Editorial Office

We are excited to welcome the following recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Agriculture:

Prof. Dr. Pirjo Mäkelä, University of Helsinki, Finland
Dr. Vittorio Venturi, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Italy
Dr. John C. Snyder, University of Kentucky, USA
Prof. Dr. Rentao Song, China Agricultural University, China
Dr. Mercè Llugany, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Vasileios AntoniadisUniversity of Thessaly, Greece
Dr. Christian Schader, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Switzerland
Prof. Dr. Silvia Guidoni, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy
Dr. Pilar Andrés, CREAF, Spain
Dr. Laura Giagnoni, University of Brescia, Italy
Dr. Andreas Meyer-Aurich, Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy, Germany
Prof. Qinghua Nie, South China Agricultural University, China
Dr. Ana P G C Marques, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal
Prof. Timothy L. Grey, University of Georgia, USA
Dr. Giacomo Cocetta, University of Milano, Italy
Dr. Niels Holst, Aarhus University, Denmark
Dr. John C. Tyndall, Iowa State University, USA
Dr. Mark O. Winfield, University of Bristol, UK
Prof. Dr. Giustino Tonon, University of Bologna, Italy
Prof. Dr. José A. M. Demattê, University of Piracicaba, Brazil
Prof. Dr. Markku Yli-Halla, University of Helsinki, Finland
Dr. Claudia Di Bene, CREA-AA, Italy
Prof. Claudia Arcidiacono, Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy
Dr. Thomas F. Ducey, USDA, USA
Dr. Gioacchino Pappalardo, Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy
Dr. Angeles Calatayud, Department of Horticulture, Spain
Dr. Éva Darkó, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungary
Prof. Dr. Maciej Zaborowicz, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poland
Prof. Dr. Luis Parras-Alcantara, University of Córdoba–UCO, Spain
Prof. Dr. Yubin Lan, South China Agricultural University, China
Prof. Marco Mariotti, University of Pisa, Italy
Dr. Maria A. Tsiafouli, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Dr. Marcella M. Giuliani, University of Foggia, Italy
Dr. Diego Jarquin, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, USA
Prof. Dr. Wataru Mizunoya, Azabu University, Japan
Prof. Dr. Marcin Rapacz, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Poland
Prof. Dr. Florence Fontaine, University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France
Dr. Carlos Guzmán, University of Cordoba, Spain
Dr. Francesco Primo Vaccari, National Research Council, Italy
Dr. Miguel Soriano, University of Almeria, Spain
Dr. Urszula Norton, University of Wyoming, USA 

Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture/editors.

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Agriculture 2021 Young Investigator Award is Dr. Carlos Guzmán.

Dr. Carlos Guzmán defended his Ph.D. in 2011 at the University of Cordoba, Spain. His Ph.D. was focused on wheat genetic resources for wheat quality improvement and was granted the Outstanding Thesis Award by his university. In 2012, Dr. Guzmán joined the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico, as a post-doc to work in the Wheat Chemistry and Quality Laboratory within the Global Wheat Program. In 2014, he obtained a scientist position to lead the laboratory and the activities related to grain quality improvement. After working for eight years at CIMMYT, he returned to the University of Cordoba in Spain in 2019 with a researcher position (Ramon y Cajal Program grant).

His work has engaged everything related to wheat quality, from better understanding the genetic control and environmental effects on the traits that determine wheat processing and end-use quality, to the development of novel methodologies that allow a more efficient integration of grain quality in wheat breeding programs. Dr. Guzmán has also participated in research projects related to the implementation of novel technologies such as genomic selection in breeding programs or to the enhancement of wheat grain nutritional quality.

Dr. Guzmán has published more than 70 articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, five book chapters, and two books. He has also participated in numerous international seminars and conferences (as an invited speaker, organizer, or chair) and has participated in several international initiatives related to wheat breeding and quality. He has obtained, in grants and in contracts with the private sector, close to USD 1 million. His ongoing work is focused on all aspects of wheat quality and breeding, with a special focus on understanding the relations between the phenotypic and genetic variability and on transferring quality traits of interest to commercial wheat varieties.

Dr. Carlos Guzmán in field and lab

As the awardee, Dr. Guzmán will receive an honorarium of 2000 CHF, an offer to publish a paper free of charge before 31 December 2022 in Agriculture after peer-review, and an engraved plaque.

We would like to thank all the nominators from various fields of study for their participation and all the Award Committee Members for their evaluation of the abundant excellent nominations.

We welcome the following recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Agriculture:

Prof. Dr. Bettina Eichler-Löbermann, University of Rostock, Germany

Prof. Dr. Ioannis Tokatlidis, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece

Dr. Mumtaz Cheema, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Dr. Gérard Gaillard, Agroscope, Switzerland

Dr. Sergio Mapelli, Italian National Research Council (CNR), Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology (IBBA), Italy

Dr. Mohsin Tanveer, University of Tasmania, Australia

Prof. Dr. Antonios N. Rezitis, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece

Prof. Dr. Brian J. Atwell, Macquarie University, Australia

Dr. Jonas Jägermeyr, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, USA

Prof. Dr. Nacer Bellaloui, Crop Genetics Research Unit, USA

We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

MDPI is proud to adopt the principles of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) to support building equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications.

The C4DISC represents organizations and individuals working in scholarly communications and is focused on addressing issues of diversity and inclusion within the publishing industry.

MDPI’s Managing Editors encourage the Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors to appoint diverse expert Editorial Boards. This is also reflective in our multi-national and inclusive workplace. We are proud to create equal opportunities without regard to gender, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual orientation, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, or socio-economic status. There is no place for discrimination in our workplace and editors of MDPI journals are to uphold these principles in high regard.

Representatives from C4DISC meet monthly, and have started to implement initiatives to shed light and improve on the lack of diversity in scholarly communications. Some of the initiatives include developing a joint statement of principles; conducting market research; providing training resources, best practices, toolkits, and documentation for our collective memberships; and establishing outreach programs, curricula, events, and publications.

The Coalition is committed to:

• eliminating barriers to participation, extending equitable opportunities across all stakeholders, and ensuring that our practices and policies promote equitable treatment and do not allow, condone, or result in discrimination;
• creating and maintaining an environment that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences;
• promoting diversity in all staff, volunteers, and audiences, including full participation in programs, policy formulation, and decision-making;
• raising awareness about career opportunities in our industries to groups who are currently underrepresented in the workforce;
• supporting our members in achieving diversity and inclusion within their organizations.

At MDPI we have slightly revised the layout for articles to be published in the 2021 Volume, starting at the end of December 2020. As of today, the article templates available for download on ‘Instructions for Authors’ pages have been updated.

The most noticeable change can be found on the first page of the article, where a left-hand column has been created to include the following front matter elements: (i) the recommended citation style for the article, (ii) the publishing history, (iii) as well as the Creative Commons Attribution license used (iv) a standard note regarding affiliations. At the same time, the extra spacing on the left means the authors’ affiliations are now more clearly set apart than before. Other front matter key elements such as journal logo, article type, article title, authors, abstract and keywords remain unchanged.

The blank column on the left runs through all pages in an article; as a result, the main text is slightly more condensed, which improve reader friendliness for smaller screens. Small figures/tables are aligned on the left with standard indenture, while large figures/tables are centered and covering the full width of the page. The revised layout was applied in the article pictured below, to serve as an example:

1) Information is displayed in the left information bar.

2) In the main text, there is a blank column on the left.

3) Small tables/figures are aligned on the left, large tables/figures are centered.

We are pleased to acknowledge that many academic editors who have made an impact on MDPI journals as editorial board members, editors-in-chief, or section editors, are recognized as 2020 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate.

Highly Cited Researchers highlights the top 1% of researchers, by citations, in one or more of the 22 fields used in Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators. We offer our congratulations to 279 academic editors of MDPI journals who were recognized as the most influential scholars in their fields in 2020.

The full list of 2020 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed on https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2020/

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.

He holds an MSc from the University of Padova in Mechanical Engineering and in 2006, he completed a PhD in Industrial Production Engineering at the University of Padova, in joint supervision with the Technical University of Denmark. He has more than 10 years of experience in measurement and sensing technologies applied for the monitoring and enhancement of agricultural operations.

He is the author of four patents and more than 120 papers indexed by Scopus, published in the field of proximal and remote sensing and in precision agriculture. His teaching activity includes courses on applied statistics, agricultural engineering, precision farming, and unmanned aerial vehicles for agriculture.

He is participating as a proposer or as a scientific partner for several projects funded in the framework of the European rural development program and of the European Regional Development Fund, focused on vineyard sustainability, greenhouse sensing, and agricultural machinery improvement. He is also participating in two other H2020 funded projects (Varcities, Echo-Mac).

We warmly welcome Dr. Francesco Marinello as the Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Digital Agriculture”, and we look forward to achieving many milestones under his leadership. For further information on the journal section, please visit the following link.

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

We welcome the following recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Agriculture:

Prof. Dr. Roy Kennedy, Pershore College, UK

Prof. Dr. Laura Barsanti, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy

Prof. Dr. Francesco Caracciolo, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

Prof. Franco Famiani, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Italy

Prof. Dr. Fuh-Jyh Jan, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan

Prof. Dr. Wen-Chi Chang, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Dr. María Gloria Lobo, Department Producción vegetal en zonas tropicales y Subtropicales, Spain

Dr. Osuna Ruiz Maria Dolores, Ctr Sci & Technol Res Extremadura CICYTEX, Spain

Dr. Fernando Alferez, University of Florida, USA

Prof. Giancarlo Bozzo, Università degli Studi di Bari, Italy

Dr. Joshua D. Klein, gricultural ResearchOrganization - the Volcani Center, Israel

Dr. Michael Blanke, University of Bonn, Germany

Prof. Dr. Antonello Santini, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

Dr. Sara Marinari, Tuscia University, Italy

Dr. Laura Zavattaro, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy