Effects of Agronomic Practices on Soil Properties and Health
A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Soil and Plant Nutrition".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 January 2026 | Viewed by 901
Special Issue Editors
Interests: phytoremediation; soil chemistry; sustainable and conservative agriculture
Interests: agroecology; ecosystem services; intercropping; root interactions; cover cropping; legumes; wheat; phosphorus availability; root exudates (carboxylates and phosphatase activity)
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: plant biostimulants; soil humic substances; soil science and plant nutrition; plant physiology; soil enzymatic activity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
After decades of soil overexploitation in the past century due to conventional intensive agriculture, sustainable and conservative agricultural practices—such as intercropping, a practice almost entirely abandoned due to main-crop competition—are experiencing revisited and new adoption. Due to increasingly extreme climate phenomena related to global warming (such as soil erosion and widespread soil contamination) and accompanying challenges, such as the need to properly feed a growing world population, it is now essential to maintain and restore the fertility of agricultural soils while also making marginal and/or moderately contaminated soils characterized by low microbial diversity and enzymatic activity and low organic matter storage suitable for low-intensity agriculture.
Based on the above, this Special Issue will focus on the following:
- Short-term effects (maximum 3 years) of different crop rotations on the enzymatic activity of sandy soils.
- Short- and long-term effects of intercropping on the availability of heavy metals and their accumulation in moderately contaminated soils.
- Cover crops and organic matter storage in marginal and sloping grounds.
- Cover cropping and intercropping effects on weed infestation and the accumulation of high-molecular-weight allelochemicals in soil.
- Management of phytochemical degradation in soil under cover cropping and intercropping.
- Phosphorus availability in marginal soils under cover cropping and intercropping (with a special focus on tropical and subtropical soils).
The overall aim of this Special Issue is to encourage the development of practices focused on restoring fertility with the goal of “conquering and re-conquering” new lands for sustainable agriculture.
Dr. Marco Pittarello
Dr. Lo Presti Emilio
Dr. Paolo Carletti
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. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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
- enzymatic activity
- organic matter
- soil fertility
- sustainable agriculture
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