Strategies to Improve the Security and Nutritional Quality of Crop Species—2nd Edition

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 697

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation—State Research Institute, Czartoryskich 8 St., 24-100 Pulawy, Poland
Interests: production technology; cereals; yield; baking quality; cultivars; diseases; stress; mycotoxins
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Guest Editor
Department of Grain Processing and Bakery, Prof. Waclaw Dabrowski Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology—State Research Institute, 02-532 Warsaw, Poland
Interests: wheat; crop quality; food quality; starch damage; rheological properties; Mixolab
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nutritious and safe food is essential for societal health. Today, consumers seek food that is nutrient-rich and health-promoting. However, ensuring food safety is the primary challenge. The quality of raw materials is crucial, as it directly impacts the final product. Therefore, cultivation technology for each plant species are vital. Proper crop management can increase nutrient levels and obtain suitable raw materials, while poor management may result in chemical contamination (e.g., pesticide residues) and physical contamination (e.g., heavy metals, nitrates). Fungal diseases can also reduce quality, producing harmful mycotoxins. Due to climate change, urbanization, and other human activities, concerns over these contaminants in foods are rising. Recently, biotechnology and genome editing have gained attention as strategies to enhance nutritional value and improve resistance to pests and adverse conditions like drought.

This Special Issue is a continuation of the previous Special Issue and still focuses on the role that soil quality, agrotechnology (tillage, forecrop, fertilization, crop protection, harvesting), and varieties play in the production of high-quality food. For this reason, high-quality interdisciplinary research results from different research fields, including genetics, new genomic techniques and breeding, agriculture, food technology, and ecology, are welcome. Original scientific and review papers will be accepted.

Prof. Dr. Grazyna Podolska
Dr. Anna Szafranska
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • agrotechnology
  • cultivars
  • soil quality
  • crops
  • nutrients
  • technological quality
  • health-promoting foods
  • food security
  • sustainable agriculture
  • crop protection

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

22 pages, 919 KiB  
Article
The Grain Protein Content of Polish Cereals Other than Wheat: Can It Be Increased by Combining a Crop Sequence System, Cultivar Selection, and Plant Protection?
by Marta K. Kostrzewska and Magdalena Jastrzębska
Agriculture 2025, 15(9), 1016; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15091016 - 7 May 2025
Viewed by 410
Abstract
After legumes, cereals are the most important source of protein for humans and livestock worldwide. One way to meet growing nutritional demands is to increase the grain protein content (GPC) of cereals. Breeding advances in this regard should be supported by optimized agricultural [...] Read more.
After legumes, cereals are the most important source of protein for humans and livestock worldwide. One way to meet growing nutritional demands is to increase the grain protein content (GPC) of cereals. Breeding advances in this regard should be supported by optimized agricultural practices. The GPCs of winter rye, winter triticale, spring barley, and spring oats grown in 2018–2022 in northeast Poland were evaluated to determine the influence of the crop sequence system (continuous monocropping, crop rotation), cultivar (two for each species), plant protection level (control treatment, herbicide, herbicide, and fungicide), and interactions among these factors. The cultivar selection was a significant GPC determinant in all cereals. Growing triticale in crop rotation after a legume increased its GPC compared to continuous monocropping, but decreased the GPC of rye and had no effect on the GPCs of spring cereal that followed non-legume crops. Using herbicides and herbicides combined with fungicides promoted the GPC of rye and oats, but not of triticale and barley. The heterogeneity of the interaction effects of the studied agricultural practices on the GPCs of the individual cereals prevents the identification of a universal combination that would ensure the highest GPC levels. The inter-annual weather variability played a significant role in shaping the GPCs of cereals and in modifying the influence of the controlled factors. Full article
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