Advances in Intercropping
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Physiology and Crop Production".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 October 2023) | Viewed by 27793
Special Issue Editors
2. College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China
Interests: intercropping; maize-soybean; sustainable agriculture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: plant breeding & genetics; biochemistry; cell signaling; light environment; inter-cropping
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
An increasing population and decrease in cultivated land threatens food security, and this problem is not being addressed by monoculture systems. These intensified monoculture systems have negatively impacted the health and productivity of agricultural lands. In addition, our world is struggling to optimize new planting practices/strategies to improve crop production that use fewer inputs, especially nutrients and water, to satisfy the current and future needs for food, feed, and fiber, while reducing negative environmental impacts. Additionally, this challenge of finding new and sustainable ways to intensify agriculture has been magnified in countries/regions that have a higher population and less arable land for agriculture production. Intercropping is the practice of growing two or more crops in proximity and has been practiced since early in the evolution of agriculture. However, to ensure food security, intercropping based on advanced scientific knowledge has rapidly evolved over the past few decades. Companion crop competition and compatibility are important factors in intercropping that may vary with the type of companion crops, plant morphology and physiology, soil texture and fertility, and the overall environment of the region. For successful intercropping, plant anatomy and genetics also play an important role in achieving a higher output with the lower consumption of inputs. Therefore, with the advancement of knowledge in these influencing factors, intercropping has become a hot spot in modern crop production to achieve higher land equivalent ratios.
This Special Issue addresses the recent advances in intercropping and aims to gather the most recent scientific knowledge on this subject. In this broad context, we invite investigators to submit original research articles and reviews that explore different topics on the overall intercropping/intercropping systems in relation to plant morphology, physiology, anatomy, plant genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Muhammad Ali Raza
Prof. Dr. Wenyu Yang
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. Plants 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 2700 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
- light environment
- land equivalent ratio
- fertilizer use efficiency
- plant physiology
- plant plasticity
- plant genetics
- molecular biology
- sustainable agriculture
- agroecology
- inter- and intra-specific interaction
- low-input agriculture
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