Optimize Nutrient Cycling to Improve Soil Fertility and Plant Productivity

A special issue of Horticulturae (ISSN 2311-7524). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Nutrition".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2025 | Viewed by 862

Special Issue Editors

State Key Laboratory of Efficient Utilization of Arid and Semi-Arid Arable Land in Northern China, The Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Interests: plant nutrition; plant biostimulants; fertilizer; fertilization zinc cycling
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Guest Editor
Department of Plant Nutrition, CEBAS-CSIC, Campus Universitario de Espinardo, 30100 Murcia, Spain
Interests: plant nutrition; fertilization; abiotic stress; trees; horticultural plants; irrigation; hydroponic system
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Horticultural crops, whether vegetable crops, fruit trees, or medicinal and ornamental plants, need large amounts of available soil nutrients to ensure that their nutritional needs are met. However, the excessive input of nutrients and an unbalanced nutrient ratio not only make it difficult for plant roots to absorb the necessary nutrients for healthy growth and optimal yield but also result in a decline in soil quality and environmental pollution within the farmland ecosystem. To enhance plant productivity and sustainability through optimizing nutrient cycling in the soil–plant system, various measures such as deep ploughing, crop rotation, straw return, green manure mulching, biostimulants, high-efficiency fertilizer products, and agronomic practices have been tailored to all-around scenario-oriented (soil-specific, crop-oriented, and climate-sensitive) requirements. The mechanism process of nutrient cycling in various scenarios has also been explored to serve sustainable innovative development ideas and demonstration applications. Research articles, reviews, short notes, and opinion articles focused on the application and mechanism of soil–plant nutrients to horticultural plants are welcome to be submitted to our Special Issue, entitled “Optimize Nutrient Cycling to Improve Soil Fertility and Plant Productivity”.

Dr. Meng Xu
Dr. Francisco Garcia-Sanchez
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • nutrient fate
  • soil fertility
  • plant nutrition
  • soil–plant interaction
  • stress condition
  • fertilizer
  • fertilization
  • sustainable tillage

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 4522 KiB  
Article
Intercropping Between Panax ginseng and Arisaema amurense Improves Ginseng Quality by Improving Soil Properties and Microbial Communities
by Bochen Lv, Hai Sun, Weiyu Cao, Jiapeng Zhu, Hao Liang, Hongjie Long, Yanmei Cui, Cai Shao and Yayu Zhang
Horticulturae 2025, 11(2), 172; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae11020172 - 6 Feb 2025
Viewed by 617
Abstract
The imbalance in soil microcosm systems caused by the long-term monoculture of ginseng is the main cause of continuous cropping disorder in ginseng, an important factor limiting the development of the ginseng industry. The ecological intercropping pattern of medicinal plants is a planting [...] Read more.
The imbalance in soil microcosm systems caused by the long-term monoculture of ginseng is the main cause of continuous cropping disorder in ginseng, an important factor limiting the development of the ginseng industry. The ecological intercropping pattern of medicinal plants is a planting technology that achieves efficient, high-quality and sustainable production of Chinese medicinal materials by increasing the diversity of farmland ecosystems and improving the stability of soil micro-ecosystems, thereby alleviating the continuous cropping disorder of medicinal plants. However, there remains a lack of research on the ecological intercropping cultivation of ginseng. We constructed a Panax ginseng/Arisaema amurense intercropping model to explore the changes in soil nutrients, enzyme activities, soil microbial communities and ginseng quality. The findings of this study demonstrated that intercropping could decelerate the acidification process of soils and effectively increased 37.02% of soil organic matter, 32.39% of total nitrogen, 5.18% of total potassium and 9.03% of available phosphorus contents in ginseng inter-root soil compared with monocropping. The results revealed that intercropping increased the soil urease and soil acid phosphatase activities while reducing the soil sucrase activity in the inter-root soil. Additionally, intercropping elevated the α-diversity of the inter-root soil bacterial community and diminished the composition and abundance of the fungal community. The intercropping exhibited a pronounced inhibitory impact on two common genera of pathogenic fungi, Fusarium and Cylindrocarpon Furthermore, the total ginsenosides and diverse monomer ginsenosides present in the roots of intercropped ginseng exhibited varying degrees of enhancement. The results of the analyses indicated that the observed increase in ginsenoside content under intercropping was attributable to interactions between soil microorganisms, including the Prevotella_7, Penicillium, Humicola and Deconica, and soil factors such as SOM, NH4+–N, AP and S-UE. Thus, implementing P. ginseng/A. amurense ecological intercropping can effectively mitigate soil acidification, enhance soil nutrient effectiveness, optimize soil microbial community composition and augment ginsenoside content. Full article
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