Soil-Borne and Air-Borne Fungi in Crop Systems: Impacts, Interactions, and Management Strategies

Dear Colleagues,

Crop systems comprise a variety of agricultural practices and methods used for cultivating plants, which can influence biodiversity, sustainability, soil health, and pest dynamics. Agriculturally important soil-borne and air-borne fungal pathogens can be destructive players in crop production worldwide, causing reduced crop performance, decreased yield, higher production costs, and affecting global food security by food contamination with mycotoxins. Fungi present in the soil cause significant effects, including root rot and reduced plant vigor, altered seedling survival, and transfer of metabolites that can affect plant nutrition. Fungal spores can be causal agents of crops epidemics, leading to leaf and fruit damage. Moreover, spores produced by some plant fungal pathogen taxon, found in the atmosphere, are responsible for a direct effect on human health, causing allergic reactions. Fungal interactions occur at multiple scales: direct antagonism or facilitation among microbes, plant–fungus signaling that alters host resistance or growth, and interactions shaped by abiotic context (soil moisture, microclimate). Plant fungal pathogens often possess flexible genomes, driving their potential for rapid adaptation to disease management practices, as well as epigenetic mechanisms able to increase their stress-adaptive potential in rapidly changing environments. The global climate change, altering temperature and moisture levels, impacts fungal distribution, favoring new disease outbreaks and increasing stress on crops. 

The complexity of this issue calls for integrated and adaptative strategies of monitoring and management.

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide a forum for a broad audience of researchers to publish their results and link them together, enabling their joint evaluation and optimizing their utilization. We welcome original research articles and comprehensive reviews concerning multiple aspects of the investigation of soil-borne and air-borne fungal pathogens impacting crop systems. There is a particular focus on the following topics:

• Methods for isolation, identification, and detection of pathogens (molecular, spectroscopy, imaging).
• Sustainable prevention (biocontrol, natural compounds, resistant varieties).
• Management strategies (addressing pesticide resistance and mycotoxins concerns, integrating digital tools with precision agriculture for early and accurate disease control).
• Understanding pathogenic mechanisms (interactions among pathogens, hosts, soil, natural microflora, rhizosphere, and environmental conditions; genomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metagenomics, and epigenetics studies are welcome and will be prioritized)

Dr. Katia Gazzetti
Dr. Caterina Morcia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• disease emergence
• fungicide resistance emergence
• crop performance
• climate change
• detection
• mycotoxins
• plant–pathogen interaction
• biocontrol
• disease management
• genome