Climate Resilient Agronomic, Water and Soil Management Practices for Sustainable Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

In twenty first century, soil quality deterioration and scarcity of fresh water due to pollution (industrialization), salinization and ground water depletion are the greatest concerns to mankind for sustainable agriculture. Climate change in the form of extreme climate events is again making the situation more complex for sustainable crop production to feed the ever growing population particularly in Asia.

Recently Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRA) practices such as conservation agriculture, crop varieties capable of coping up with problem soils and ecologically unfavourable conditions and climate-smart water management/irrigation practices have emerged as promising avenues globally to adapt and mitigate the climate change and its effects. Loss of soil carbon due to poor soil and crop management practices leads to decline in soil fertility. For improved and sustainable agricultural productivity, soil and crop management are crucial under the changing climate conditions. Soil, water and crop management practices such as zero tillage, residue retention, crop diversification for enhancing soil organic carbon and judicious water use need to be popularized among the farmers. Recent changes observed in the weed spectrum in different cropping system throughout the world is associated with the climate change which impacts on the long-term interactions between crops and weeds. The pre-dominant practice for weed management is herbicides and tillage to remove weeds. However, evidence of negative environmental impacts from both practices is growing, and herbicide resistance is increasingly prevalent in several countries.  

Resource-starved countries (including many Asian countries) are most vulnerable to climate change leading to land degradation, ground water depletion, change in weed flora and risk of significant decline in crop yield. Therefore, to feed the burgeoning population, sustainable crop production should be maintained by improving soil quality through enhancing soil carbon content, improving soil fertility and devising better water management options which are in line with the UN’s decade on “Ecosystem Restoration” (2021-2030).

We welcome papers covering diverse areas on

• Soil, crop and water management through CRA practices including CA,
• Sustainable agriculture production systems including intensive cropping, precision agriculture etc.,
• Farm- or field-level studies explicitly covering soil and water issues and their sustainable management.
• Soil quality improvement for intensive cropping systems,
• Improved water use efficiency (WUE) under different cropping systems especially rice cropping,
• Climate change impact, adaptation and mitigation technology for water management.
• Climate-smart technologies for cereal and non-cereal crops and farming systems.
• Crop varieties for soils under climate vulnerable ecosystems etc.
• Climate change impact on weed flora
• Improved nutrient use efficiency (NUE) through novel agronomic and edaphic practices,
• Soil carbon behaviour under different managements,
• Reclamation of salt affected soils,
• Sustainable weed management including recent technological and ecological approaches.

Dr. Ashim Datta
Dr. Md. Khairul Alam
Dr. Arvind Kumar Yadav
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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability 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 2400 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.