Tillage for Resource Use Efficiency: Insights from Crop Physiology

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Innovative Cropping Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 21

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Agronomy, Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding 071001, China
Interests: Crop ecophysiology; crop productivity and quality; resource use efficiency; tillage; cover crop; sustainable cropping systems

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Agronomy, Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding 071001, China
Interests: Conservation tillage; crop physiology; water use efficiency; soil-crop interactions; sustainable cropping systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on how tillage and related field management strategies can improve crop productivity, quality, and resource use efficiency under changing environmental conditions. It aims to connect crop physiology, agronomy, soil-water management, and sustainability assessment to support resilient production systems.

Tillage, residue management, and other field practices have long been central to regulating soil moisture, nutrient cycling, root growth, and crop performance. With increasing pressure on water, fertilizer, energy, and environmental quality, optimizing tillage has become a key topic in modern agronomy and sustainable intensification.

This Special Issue aims to collect original research and reviews on the physiological, agronomic, and environmental effects of tillage and associated management measures across cropping systems. The scope includes field experiments, modeling studies, and integrated assessments related to crop growth, yield formation, quality, soil health, and resource efficiency.

Emerging topics include conservation tillage, reduced tillage, cover cropping, plastic mulching, and their interactions with soil-water-nutrient dynamics, crop-soil-water coupling, remote and data-driven evaluation of management effects, machine learning-supported sustainability assessment, and integrated analysis of productivity, economic return, and environmental consequences.

We welcome original articles, reviews, and methodological papers on tillage optimization, crop physiological responses, water and nutrient use efficiency, mulching and residue management, sustainable cropping systems, soil-crop interactions, and regional assessments of agronomic and environmental performance.

Dr. Yandong Wang
Prof. Dr. Wenchao Zhen
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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 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

  • tillage
  • crop physiology
  • resource use efficiency
  • sustainable cropping systems
  • soil-water management

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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