Sustainable Water Reuse in Agriculture: Advances in Contaminant Treatment and Management
A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Agricultural Water Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 June 2025 | Viewed by 172
Special Issue Editors
Interests: soil chemistry; biochar; wastewater reuse; biogeochemistry; soil organic matter; regenerative management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
As the global population grows, the need for food, and therefore agricultural production, will increase worldwide. Agricultural irrigation accounts for about 70% of global freshwater consumption. Given this demand on freshwater resources, an uncertain climate future, and an expected increase in agricultural intensification, alternative irrigation water sources are receiving increasing attention to reduce stress on already tenuous freshwater resources globally. Recycled wastewaters are a particularly interesting alternative water source with many benefits, such as their resilience to seasonal flow variations, potential nutrient loading capabilities, and ubiquitous availability. As such, their use may increase freshwater resource availability for other applications.
Despite the benefits of recycling wastewater for agricultural irrigation, the future expansion of irrigation with recycled wastewater faces many challenges. This includes optimally managing chemical (e.g., heavy metals, organic contaminants, and microplastics) and biological (e.g., pathogenic bacteria, antimicrobial resistant bacteria, antimicrobial resistance genes, and viruses) contaminants in wastewater and wastewater-irrigated soils to mitigate their risks in the agricultural environment. These contaminants are potentially linked with several human health concerns. There is, therefore, an urgent need to better manage contaminants in recycled wastewaters to allow for their safe and sustainable application in agricultural systems. Current work addressing this key issue is carried out across research scales and stages in the wastewater recycling–application continuum. This includes studies from laboratory to pilot-scale that are focused on developing novel physicochemical wastewater treatment processes, such as adsorption, oxidation, and membrane filtration, as well as refining established treatment methods. Research on the post-application management of wastewater-borne contaminants through soil amendments (e.g., biochar, ash, and compost), irrigation strategies, and different crop characteristics to limit plant uptake of contaminants has also been conducted.
We encourage original research, short communications, and comprehensive literature reviews within these research themes. The aim of this Special Issue is to promote research advancing contaminant management in recycled wastewater streams and wastewater-irrigated agricultural systems to advance the sustainability of recycled wastewater as an alternative irrigation water source.
Dr. Michael Schmidt
Dr. Daniel Ashworth
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- recycled water
- wastewater treatment
- irrigation
- contaminants
- antimicrobial resistance
- soil management
- water reuse
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