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Frontiers in Soil Management and Environment Sustainability in Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2022) | Viewed by 11116

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Taimoor Hassan Farooq

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Guest Editor

Bangor College China, A Joint Unit of Bangor University and Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha 410004, China
Interests: restoration ecology; plant soil interaction; nutrient cycling in forest ecosystems; nutrient deficiency and stress; carbon and nitrogen isotopic composition; GHG emissions; root and canopy development; soil conservation and biogeochemistry, environmental chemistry; carbon sequestration; soil microbial community composition; integrated cropping system; agroforestry and intercropping
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Dr. Muhammad Saleem Arif

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Guest Editor

Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Government College University Faisalabad (GCUF), Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan
Interests: soil health and ecosystem functions; nutrient cycling’ plant-soil-microbe interaction; ecological intensfication in agroecosystems

Dr. Muhammad Haroon U. Rashid

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Guest Editor

Department of Forestry and Range Management, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan
Interests: forest cultivation; agroforestry; root development; plant and Soil interaction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Managing soil properties includes protecting the soil structure necessary for agricultural and forest production and applying agricultural, silvicultural, and processing techniques to increase the long-term efficiency of the soil. Sustainable farming reduces pollution by using natural fertilizers and using fewer chemicals. This means that farm produce is healthier and better for people. Even the waste produced by sustainable farming goes back into the farm's ecosystem and does not pollute the environment. Soil and environment management is important, both directly and indirectly, to crop productivity, environmental sustainability, and human health.

Using cover crops, applying manure and compost, rotating crops, and controlling erosion for soil conservation, can maintain or increase soil organic matter. Other practices, especially plowing, tilling and cultivating, can decrease the amount of organic matter in the soil. Sustainable production deals with keeping the soil alive with organic matter, integrated pest management and reduction in usage of pesticides, protecting biodiversity, ensuring food safety and food quality, improving nutrient quality, and fertilizing the soil with organic fertilizers.

Healthy, fully functioning soil provides an environment that sustains and nourishes plants, soil microbes, and beneficial insects. Crops grown in healthy soil are more resilient because they resist pest pressure and use nutrients more efficiently. Therefore, research will be required to avoid further degradation of soils and environments through erosion or contamination and to produce sufficient safe and nutritious food for healthy diets.

This Special Issue aims to enlarge the present knowledge related to soil management and environmental sustainability in sustainable agriculture and forestry. Innovative research on technologies and methodological approaches are welcomed. The discussion of case studies, as well as of experimental work is encouraged.

Dr. Taimoor Hassan Farooq
Dr. Muhammad Saleem Arif
Dr. Muhammad Haroon U. Rashid
Guest Editors

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Keywords

plant and soil interaction
nutrient transformation
nutrient cycling
soil health management
soil nutrition and fertility
environmental protection
environmental conservation
pollutants
microorganism and microplastics

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

9 pages, 1579 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Physiochemical Properties and Microflora of the Rhizosphere Soil of Tobacco Plants with and without Bacterial Wilt

by Cong Zheng, Wei Li, Yang Zhou, Zhiwen Zhu and Xiaozong Wu

Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 3661; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043661 - 16 Feb 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1295

Abstract

Bacterial wilt is a destructive soilborne disease caused by Ralstonia solanacearum, posing a severe threat to plants in the Solanaceae family. It impacts on tobacco productivity worldwide. This study was conducted to analyze the changes in the soil’s physical and chemical properties, the number of microbes, and the bacterial diversity of the rhizosphere soil before and after the wilt disease. The rhizosphere soil of healthy and diseased tobacco plants was collected from Pucheng, Nanping, Fujian Province, Southern China. The results revealed significant differences in the trends of physical and chemical properties of the soil of healthy and diseased plants. The soil pH, available potassium (K), available phosphorous (P), and organic matter contents (SOM) were lower in the rhizosphere soil for healthy plants than for pre-diseased plants (HW). Only the available P, among all physical and chemical properties in the rhizosphere of diseased plants (HS), was significantly lower than those for pre-diseased plants (HW), changing from 149.59 mg/kg to 59.19 mg/kg. The order of numbers of the three main microbes in the rhizosphere soil for healthy plants (HC) and pre-diseased plants was the following: bacteria > actinomycetes > fungi. The number of actinomycetes in the soil of the diseased tobacco plants increased significantly. A comparison of the rhizosphere soil of diseased and healthy tobacco plants showed that the relative abundance of the bacterial community in the rhizosphere soil of the pathogenic tobacco plants changed significantly. The community diversity was increased, and the Pseudomonadaceae, to which the bacterial pathogen of bacterial wilt belonged, rose to a certain extent. Both pre-diseased and healthy plants showed changes in the physical and chemical properties, microbial quantity, and microbial diversity, thus proving that tobacco disease was closely related to the soil’s ecological environment. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Frontiers in Soil Management and Environment Sustainability in Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry)

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12 pages, 1214 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessment of Mound Soils Bacterial Community of the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta across Guangdong Province of China

by Bamisope Steve Bamisile, Lei Nie, Junaid Ali Siddiqui, Luis Carlos Ramos Aguila, Komivi Senyo Akutse, Chunsheng Jia and Yijuan Xu

Sustainability 2023, 15(2), 1350; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15021350 - 11 Jan 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1688

Abstract

Soil microbes have a wide range of distribution across the world and can be found in different agricultural and forest systems including cultivated soils, ant mounds, decaying trees, leaves, roots, and on insect bodies. Across five counties of Guangdong province of China, the assemblage of bacterial associates of red imported fire ant (RIFA) were examined. The locations were selected based on evidence of high presence of RIFA mounds in these regions. Samples were analyzed from mound soils, plant debris within mounds, and the ant body. The current study analyzed bacterial species composition and richness patterns, where 525 isolates were recovered in total, comprising 44 bacterial taxa. Taxa abundance was highest in the ant body at 35 taxa, while the values were relatively similar across soil substrate and plant debris, where 3 and 6 taxa, respectively, were recorded. The highest bacterial taxa recovery rate was recorded in Guangzhou, where a total of 17 taxa were isolated. Myroides odoratimimus was the most common across all substrates and locations among the bacterial taxa. Others with the highest isolation frequencies includes, Enterobacter cloacae, Vagococcus fluvialis, and Myroides odoratus. The understanding of the bacterial community composition of RIFA is crucial for the development of successful management techniques for these notorious social ants. In order to expand on the findings of the current study, it is imperative to understand if the associated microbial communities of the RIFA form a parasitic, antagonistic, or mutualistic relationship with their host. In this vein, further studies would examine the influence of the characterized bacterial associates of the RIFA on the social behavior, physiology, and the host response to foreign pathogens. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Frontiers in Soil Management and Environment Sustainability in Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry)

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16 pages, 3426 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sustainable Control of Galinsoga parviflora with Oxyfluorfen, Flumioxazin, and Linuron Application in Two Soils Cultivated with Garlic

by Dilma F. de Paula, Elisa Maria G. da Silva, Laryssa B. X. da Silva, Alessandro da C. Lima, Patrick B. Billu, Marcelo R. dos Reis and Kassio F. Mendes

Sustainability 2022, 14(24), 16637; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416637 - 12 Dec 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1820

Abstract

Herbicides applied in PRE-emergence enables sustainable weed control. The objective of this study was to evaluate the control of gallant soldier (Galinsoga parviflora) with the residual herbicides oxyfluorfen, flumioxazin, and linuron in soils cultivated with garlic from two regions of Brazil: Rio Paranaíba-MG (Oxisol) and Curitibanos-SC (Ultisol). The efficiency of the herbicides was evaluated at the following doses: oxyfluorfen (0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384, and 768 g a.i. ha⁻¹), flumioxazin (0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 15, 30, 40, 60, and 120 g a.i. ha⁻¹), and linuron (0, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 2430 g a.i. ha⁻¹). The degree of damage on the 7th, 14th, and 21st day after emergence (DAE) and dry matter on the 21st day after emergence (DAE) were determined to evaluate the control (C₈₀) and the growth reduction (GR₈₀) of 80% of the plant, respectively, compared to the treatment without herbicide. Three herbicides were effective at the control of G. parviflora, with the C₈₀ at 21 DAE on Ultisol being 81.82, 4.59, and 141.26 g a.i. ha⁻¹, and a GR₈₀ of 61, 8.3, and 151.3 g a.i. ha⁻¹ for oxyfluorfen, flumioxazin, and linuron, respectively. On the other hand, on Oxisol (lower clay content and soil organic matter), the doses were lower, with the C₈₀ at 21 DAE at 20.85, 3.50, and 118 g a.i. ha⁻¹, and a GR₈₀ of 54, 4.03, and 101.23 g a.i. ha⁻¹, respectively. This weed showed higher control under flumioxazin compared to the other herbicides in both soils. The use of low doses of residual herbicides contributes to sustainable weed control in garlic growing in the field. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Frontiers in Soil Management and Environment Sustainability in Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry)

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14 pages, 2850 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Characterizing the Morphological Descriptors of Thirty Seed Sources of Teak (Tectona grandis L.f.) Concerning Sustainable Forestry

by Jawahar Vishnu M. V., Parthiban K. T., Umesh Kanna S., Radhakrishnan S., Uttam Kumar and Taimoor Hassan Farooq

Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12012; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912012 - 22 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1848

Abstract

Teak (Tectona grandis L.f.) plantations have increased recently in India; however, morphological descriptors for teak are still lacking. Thus, the goal of this work was to develop descriptors based on morphological characteristics. Among 30 seed sources collected from different states of India, 24 morphological descriptors, including leaf length, leaf width, presence of petiole, petiole length, leaf shape, shape of leaf apex, shape of leaf base, leaf texture, phyllotaxy, leaf attitude, leaf margin, leaf margin undulation, leaf brightness, leaf venation, leaf main vein, leaf veins, leaf vein color, leaf color, leaf pubescence, young leaf color, number of internodes, internodal length, trunk spots, and trunk color, were developed based on leaf and stem characteristics. These seed sources exhibited a difference in all traits except leaf shape, shape of leaf apex, leaf phyllotaxy, leaf margin, leaf venation, leaf main vein, and presence of trunk spots. The Jaccard similarity index was used to calculate the genetic similarity between the sources, and the Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean (UPGMA) method was used to perform a cluster analysis (four groups at a similarity of 0.5 were obtained). According to the observations made, most of the sources exhibited high similarity, which indicates that only a few characteristics can be used to distinguish the sources. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Frontiers in Soil Management and Environment Sustainability in Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry)

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13 pages, 1127 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Role of Digital Soil Information in Assisting Precision Soil Management

by Birhanu Iticha, Muhammad Kamran, Rui Yan, Dorota Siuta, Abdulrahman Al-Hashimi, Chalsissa Takele, Fayisa Olana, Bożena Kukfisz, Shehzad Iqbal and Mohamed S. Elshikh

Sustainability 2022, 14(18), 11710; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141811710 - 18 Sep 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2028

Abstract

Soil information is the basis for the site-specific management of soils. The study aimed to digitize soil information and classify it into soil mapping units (SMUs) using geostatistics. The study area was grouped into 12 SMUs, or management zones. The pH of the soils ranged from 7.3 in SMU2 to 8.6 in SMU5. Most SMUs exhibited low total nitrogen (TN) that could be attributed to very low soil organic carbon (SOC) in the soils. Available phosphorus (AvP) was very low in all the mapping units. The exchangeable K varied between 0.12 cmol(+) kg⁻¹ (SMU7) and 0.95 cmol(+) kg⁻¹ (SMU10). SMU12 was identified as marginally sodic and at a high risk of developing severe alkalinity unless possible management measures are implemented. Our findings show that a lack of soil information causes an imbalance between soil requirements and external nutrient inputs, negatively affecting crop production. Therefore, high-resolution digital soil information can assist the site-specific application of soil nutrients and amendments based on spatial variability in line with soil requirements. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Frontiers in Soil Management and Environment Sustainability in Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry)

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