Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212207

Authors: Yufan Wang Boxiang Ji Dandan Xu Zhe Bao Tuo Jin Quanqi Li Chitao Sun Qian Zhang Qinghua Mi Mingming Zhang

Biodegradable film is a potential alternative to polyethylene film, but its performance under sub-soil film mulching in saline–alkali soil remains unclear. A two-season winter wheat field experiment on the Bohai Coastal Plain compared a control without film mulching with polyethylene and biodegradable films on the soil surface or covered with approximately 1 cm of soil. Soil cover over film raised soil temperature before jointing and lowered it thereafter, while generally reducing electrical conductivity of the 1:5 soil–water extract (EC) and soluble Na+ in the 0–20 cm soil layer. Across materials and seasons, soil cover increased grain yield, maturity dry matter, and grain yield water use efficiency (WUEy) by 17.3%, 14.0%, and 22.4%, respectively, while estimated seasonal evapotranspiration was 4.8% lower. Piecewise structural equation modeling showed associations of soil cover with greater early-stage soil water storage and grain-filling dry matter. Greater grain-filling dry matter was associated with higher grain yield, whereas early-stage soil water storage did not significantly predict grain yield in the fitted model. Soil cover was associated with lower early-stage sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), whereas higher early-stage EC and SAR showed observational associations with lower grain-filling dry matter. The effect of soil cover on grain yield and WUEy did not differ significantly by film material, while the relative performance of the two film materials varied between growing seasons.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212206

Authors: Khalid Hussain Lukas M. Hallman John-Paul Fox Ying Wang Eric B. Duell Yinuo Xu Mark A. Ritenour Davie M. Kadyampakeni Lorenzo Rossi

Cover crops are increasingly used by growers in the United States as an effective approach to enhance soil health. The interactions between cover crops and soil microbiomes have been studied extensively; however, research evaluating the impact of cover crops on rhizosphere microbial communities in tree crop systems, particularly under nutrient-limited field soils in Florida, remains limited. To address these knowledge gaps, a three-year field study was conducted to evaluate the effects of cover crop mixtures on soil bacterial and fungal communities in orchards of different citrus species and cultivars across seasons. The trial included ‘Star Ruby’ grapefruit trees grafted on ‘US-942’, ‘Bearss’ lemon trees grafted on ‘Sour Orange’, and ‘OLL-8’ sweet orange trees grafted on ‘US-942’ rootstock in a randomized complete block design comparing conventional management (no cover crop-control) with cover crop treatments. Bacterial community composition showed consistent taxonomic patterns across cultivars and treatments, with Proteobacteria consistently the most abundant phylum across grapefruit, lemon, and orange orchards, followed by Actinobacteriota, Acidobacteriota, and Firmicutes. Despite this overall stability, cultivar was the strongest determinant of bacterial community structure. Additionally, functional analysis revealed significant treatment-associated shifts in predicted guilds related to nitrogen transformations, carbon metabolism, sulfur oxidation, and manganese oxidation. In contrast, fungal community composition and predicted functional profiles were primarily structured by season, with limited effects of cultivar and cover cropping. Fungal communities were consistently dominated by Ascomycota across orchards, sampling dates, and treatments.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212205

Authors: Leonor Guerra-Guimarães Jéfyne Campos Carréra Carla Pinheiro Martim De Freitas Henrique Costa Manzur-E-Mohsina Ferdous Thomas Roitsch Deila Magda dos Santos Botelho Helena Gil Azinheira John Charles D’Auria Maria do Céu Silva

Plants have developed mechanisms to regulate carbon metabolism during growth and development under both optimal and stressful conditions. In the biotrophic interaction between Coffea spp. and Hemileia vastatrix, the plant restricts pathogen access to nutrients, whereas the fungus attempts to manipulate host metabolism. Here, we investigate the metabolic mechanisms underlying post-haustorial resistance of the Kawisari coffee hybrid to H. vastatrix by integrating metabolomic, starch, enzymatic, and gene expression analyses to distinguish resistant (R) from susceptible (S) responses. Polar untargeted metabolomics (GC-TOF-MS) revealed distinct modulation of sugars, amino acids, polyamines, and phenolics between R and S responses. Combining these metabolomic profiles with starch quantification, semi-high-throughput enzyme activity assays, and RT-qPCR gene expression analysis revealed a distinct pattern of carbon reallocation in the resistant response. Specifically, resistance was associated with an early (4 DAI) transcriptional activation of the pentose phosphate pathway, evidenced by the significant upregulation of RPE (ribulose-phosphate 3-epimerase) and TK (transketolase), supporting the generation of reducing power and precursor skeletons for phenolic defenses (such as caffeoylquinic acids, salicylic acid, and flavonoids). This was coordinated with elevated activity of cytosolic/vacuolar invertases (cytInv, vacInv) and phosphoglucomutase (PGM) at later stages (7–16 DAI), consistent with the regulation of starch utilization and nitrogen remobilization, involving L-asparagine, L-ornithine, and spermine. These findings underscore the pivotal role of primary metabolic networks in supporting resistance to H. vastatrix and identify promising biochemical targets for breeding coffee cultivars with enhanced resistance to rust under climate change scenarios.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212204

Authors: Ayşe Hilal Ulusoy İnci Şahin Negiş Hamza Negiş

Late third-instar larvae of the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae), leave host fruit and pupate in soil; consequently, soil physical conditions and moisture can influence successful adult emergence. We examined the effects of compost, farmyard manure, biochar, and elemental sulfur under three moisture treatments referenced to 100%, 50%, and 25% of the initial field capacity of each unamended soil in two independent factorial pot experiments conducted under controlled laboratory conditions with a clay soil and a sandy loam soil. Each amendment × moisture combination had five independent replicate pots (n = 5), each receiving 20 late third-instar larvae, and adult emergence was recorded for 15 days. In clay soil, moisture and the amendment × moisture interaction significantly affected adult emergence, whereas the amendment main effect was not significant. In the unamended clay soil, adult emergence declined to 50% at 50% field capacity but remained 98% and 93% at 100% and 25% field capacity, respectively. In sandy loam, amendment and moisture main effects were significant, but their interaction was not. Biochar and farmyard manure had the highest mean adult emergence, with no significant difference between them. Across amendments, adult emergence was lower at 25% than at 100% field capacity. These results show that soil amendments do not consistently reduce adult emergence of C. capitata; the observed responses to amendment and moisture treatments may have implications for integrated pest management.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212203

Authors: Run Chen Yao Ren Dongyue Li Jiayue Ni Zitong Lei Xinyi He Dongyan Liu Bin Yong

Polyethylene agricultural mulching films can increase crop yields; however, long-term residue leads to the accumulation of plastic fragments and microplastics in soil, threatening soil health and food security. In this study, we conducted a field-simulated experiment in a rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) system to compare plastisphere and rhizosphere soils with respect to soil properties, soil multifunctionality (MF), and bacterial and fungal community characteristics. Our results indicate that compared with the rhizosphere, the plastisphere exhibited a significantly higher pH and lower water content. In addition, inorganic nitrogen, dissolved organic nitrogen, total nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen, net nitrogen mineralization rate, and available phosphorus were all lower in the plastisphere, while total carbon was higher. These nutrient availability shifts translated directly into ecosystem function. Soil MF was substantially lower in the plastisphere than in the rhizosphere (p < 0.001). Both bacterial and fungal richness and diversity (Chao1 and Shannon indices) were markedly reduced in the plastisphere (p < 0.01). The plastisphere also showed reduced microbial diversity and richness in both bacteria and fungi (Chao1 and Shannon indices, p < 0.01), with strong compartmental separation across communities (bacteria R2 = 0.85; fungi R2 = 0.78; p < 0.01) and simplified co-occurrence network cohesion. Random forest analyses indicated that fungal community traits were more important than bacterial traits in predicting MF. Overall, residual mulching film drives nutrient limitation and restructures microbial interaction networks, leading to decreased soil multifunctionality and potential downstream impacts on nutrient cycling and plant nutrient supply.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212201

Authors: Emmanuel Asiedu Graciela Castro Madison Causey Isha Chand Chengke Han Jarrett Dalia Igbagbolere David Micah Evalt David Gonzalez Trinity Hanning Ava Heathman Hanjo Hellmann Hanna Leonard Jessica Schallon Savannah L. Swanson Raquel Venegas Leslie Vite-Shafer

Drought is one of the most devastating abiotic stresses limiting global crop productivity and food security. As climate change increases the frequency and severity of water deficits and altered precipitation patterns, these impacts are expected to intensify. The vulnerability of major crop species, together with competition for limited freshwater resources and arable land, underscores the urgent need for integrated strategies that enhance drought resilience. This review synthesizes recent advances in understanding drought stress responses across biological scales, from cellular and molecular mechanisms to whole-plant physiology, breeding, and agronomic management. We examine the physiological and biochemical processes that enable plants to perceive and respond to water limitations, including hormone signaling, osmotic adjustment, reactive oxygen species homeostasis, and metabolic adaptation. We further discuss how modern breeding approaches, high-throughput phenotyping, transgenic technologies, and genome editing complement conventional breeding to accelerate the development of drought-resilient crops. In addition, we evaluate emerging agricultural practices, including precision irrigation, soil and crop management strategies, and the application of biostimulants, that improve water-use efficiency and crop performance under water-limited conditions. By integrating fundamental discoveries with field-based applications, this review highlights the importance of multidisciplinary approaches for developing resilient cropping systems capable of sustaining agricultural productivity under increasing climate variability and future water scarcity.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212202

Authors: Jingyi Sun Jianping Hu Xinxin Chen Wei Liu Qingxiang Yang Zhongpeng Zhang Haoran Wu

To address the numerous operational steps and structural complexity associated with existing two-row automatic transplanters that use stepwise tray conveying, whole-row seedling picking with multiple claws, and rotary seedling distribution, an alternating seedling picking and dropping system was developed. The system combines trays that remain stationary during picking, left and right claw groups that alternately pick and drop seedlings, and a fixed seedling distribution device that alternately feeds seedlings to the planting units. The seedling trays are mounted on a two-station rotary platform and remain stationary during picking. Linear motion modules drive two groups of picking claws, each consisting of two claws, in the longitudinal and transverse directions to pick and drop seedlings. Two groups of fixed seedling distribution tubes receive the seedlings and sequentially feed them to the duckbill planting units. To achieve precise and efficient seedling picking, a picking path was planned based on the tray cell arrangement, and an S-curve acceleration and deceleration strategy was applied to determine motion timing parameters for different seedling positions. Based on the receiving window of the planting mechanism, spatial and temporal matching relationships were established among the seedling picking, dropping, and planting processes. The continuous operating sequence for an entire tray was calculated to determine the operating parameters and time margins at each picking position. Experiments and parameter optimization were conducted to investigate the effects of the distribution tube opening instant, planting frequency, and seedling receiving height on seedling receiving deviation. The selected operating parameters were a distribution tube opening instant of 0.56 s, a planting frequency of 51 seedlings per row per minute, and a seedling receiving height of approximately 49 mm. Separate machine tests yielded a picking and dropping success rate of 96.48% and a receiving success rate of 100% under the selected operating conditions. These results support the feasibility of the proposed system under the conditions evaluated.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212200

Authors: Zhangyang Luo Lu Yue Yang Tong Xingli Zeng Yun Wu Xinlin Wang Jianjun Hu Kexiu Wang Dongyan Liu Xiang Tao

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades are conserved signaling modules that regulate plant growth, development, and responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. However, the genome-wide organization and transcriptional responses of the potato MAPK cascade during Phytophthora infestans infection remain insufficiently characterized. In this study, 109 MAPK cascade genes were identified in potato, comprising 17 StMAPKs, five StMAPKKs, and 87 StMAPKKKs. Phylogenetic, chromosomal, gene-structure, and conserved-motif analyses revealed clear family-level conservation, extensive structural diversity among StMAPKKKs, and multiple tandem duplication events. Putative promoter analysis showed that E-box, GT-1 motif, MYB1AT, W-box, and MYC elements were nearly ubiquitous (>95% of genes), whereas TGACG-motif and CGTCA-motif were major potential cis-regulatory elements. Of the 109 genes, 89 were expressed after P. infestans inoculation, including 17 StMAPKs, five StMAPKKs, and 67 StMAPKKKs. Notably, PGSC0003DMG400030058 (MAPK3), PGSC0003DMG401000057 (MAPK4), and PGSC0003DMG400033696 (MAPKK9) were strongly induced, with their expression increasing by 2.3- to 3.5-fold in the incompatible interaction and by 5.0- to 7.4-fold in the compatible interaction, while 13 genes were up-regulated in both incompatible and compatible interactions. Copy-number association analysis detected no significant relationship between any of the 21 examined promoter elements and infection-induced expression after false-discovery-rate correction. These results provide a genome-wide framework for identifying candidate MAPK cascade genes involved in potato-late blight interactions and a basis for subsequent functional validation.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212199

Authors: Kexin Mao Zequan Zhou Huan Wang Kewei Wang Tingting Li Qi Wang

Black cutworm (Agrotis ipsilon) is an underground pest whose larvae feed at the stem base of young crops, causing seedling wilt, severance, and stand loss. Assessment is difficult because larvae remain concealed in soil and injured plants can resemble healthy seedlings; dense planting, occlusion, and heterogeneous soil backgrounds further challenge detection. We construct an annotated live/dead seedling detection dataset for pepper, tomato, and cucumber seedlings and propose Representation–Geometry–Quality DETR (RGQ-DETR). Its P2-Guided Lodging Feature Recalibration (P2-LFR) conditions deeper channels on spatially weighted global context from high-resolution P2; Content-Gated Lodging Geometry Sampling (CG-LGS) adapts deformable sampling to candidate geometry; and Lodging Geometry-Quality Alignment (LGQA) refines candidate quality during training. RGQ-DETR achieves 59.76% AP and 72.83% AR100, improving over RT-DETR by 1.71 and 2.56 percentage points, respectively. For dead seedlings, it reaches 50.58% AP and 69.34% AR100, exceeding RT-DETR by 2.16 and 3.88 points. Compared with YOLO26m, DINO, and RF-DETR, it improves overall AP by 3.66, 3.86, and 4.25 points, respectively, with 77.89 M parameters. These results demonstrate its effectiveness for live/dead seedling monitoring under heterogeneous horticultural conditions.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212198

Authors: Jianye Lü Hongye Yang Wanhong Ding Qi Liu Biyong Liao Qiang Liu Yugang Wang Yong Tang Hongsong Ren Zhaofu Huang Jun Xue Bo Ming Shaokun Li

Because fresh waxy maize is harvested as whole ears within the brief milk-stage (R3) window, its yield formation hinges on building a strong canopy and ear foundation before silking; nitrogen (N) applied afterward mainly provides supplementary support. A split-plot trial conducted in 2024–2025 in Xinjiang’s Ili River Valley used the cultivar Wannuo 2000 to test how fertigation-N scheduling and plant density jointly govern canopy function and marketable yield. Five N regimes, each supplying 300 kg N ha−1, were compared: conventional flood irrigation (CK) and drip fertigation split across three to six applications (DT-3 through DT-6), at densities of 79,500–88,500 plants ha−1. CK and DT differed in irrigation amount, and the highest planting density of 88,500 plants ha−1 was only set in 2025. Relative to DT-3, DT-5 sustained a larger canopy at R1 and a slower decline through R3, raising post-silking dry-matter accumulation by 24.9–25.8% over CK. Fresh-ear yield rose 10.8–11.8%, and the marketable-ear rate climbed from 81.4% to 87.7% (p < 0.001). Shifting 30% of N to after silking under DT-6, however, failed to offset a less balanced pre-/post-silking distribution: yield, marketable-ear rate, and net return all fell short of DT-5 by 478 kg ha−1, 1.37 percentage points, and 1301 CNY ha−1, respectively (p ≤ 0.026). Post-silking dry matter correlated positively with plot-level yield (r = 0.76), though this response to N scheduling weakened at the highest density (D × N, p < 0.001). These findings show that profitable fresh waxy maize production demands season-long coordination of N supply with crop demand, achieved jointly with density management, and that marketable-ear formation, not yield alone, should anchor how such strategies are judged.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212196

Authors: Mingxia Wang Ben Zhao Syed Tahir Ata-Ul-Karim Wenyi Yao Wei Feng Guojie Wang Zhandong Liu

Crop nitrogen (N) status governs winter wheat growth and productivity. This study tested the hypothesis that pre-stem elongation N status determined subsequent N dynamics, with leaf area index (LAI) serving as an associative physiological mediator. Using the nitrogen nutrition index (NNI), we quantified relationships between pre- and post-stem-elongation N status and explored mechanisms underlying post-stem elongation NNI variation. Three field experiments were conducted over multiple seasons using two winter wheat cultivars, with basal and topdressing N rates ranging from 0 to 300 kg N ha−1. We measured shoot biomass, tiller number, LAI, plant N concentration, critical N concentration, and yield. Generalized linear mixed models revealed significant positive relationships between spring-regrowth NNI and NNI at stem elongation and booting across experiments. Simple linear regression analysis yielded corresponding R2 values ranging from 0.50 to 0.61. Under the tested conditions, treatments without basal N showed severe N deficiency, reflected by low NNI values (0.44–0.56). This deficiency constrained growth and persisted despite topdressing. In contrast, basal N application (60–90 kg N ha−1) alleviated these limitations. Structural equation modeling suggested that LAI was an associative mediator linking early- and late-season N status. These results highlight the value of early-season N assessment for winter wheat N management.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212197

Authors: Wenyang Cao Xiao Liu Minzhi Chen Jia Xu Lei Mei Yuliang Han Rongwei Wang Peng Zhang Yubin Luo Huanluo Ding Xiaokang Chen Tao Yang

Surface soil water content is an important indicator for daily irrigation management in cotton fields under mulched drip irrigation in southern Xinjiang, China. This study evaluated a long short-term memory (LSTM) model incorporating reference crop evapotranspiration (ET0) and a trend-consistency (TC) constraint (ET0-TC-LSTM) for next-day prediction of 0–20 cm volumetric soil water content using the preceding 7 d of observations. Four observation periods during 2022–2025 yielded 468 supervised samples, divided chronologically into 169 training, 153 validation, and 146 test samples. ET0 was included as a feature, and a one-sided training penalty restricted predicted increases beyond a tolerance under recent low-water-input and high vapor pressure deficit (VPD) conditions. Persistence, ridge regression, and a one-dimensional convolutional neural network–LSTM (CNN1D-LSTM) model were included as benchmarks. In the original seed-42 experiment, ET0-TC-LSTM achieved a test coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.9574 and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.0081 cm3 cm−3, a 29.7% RMSE reduction relative to LSTM. Across ten seeds, the mean RMSE reduction was 2.84%; TC-LSTM had the lowest mean RMSE among the four LSTM variants. Persistence was more accurate, with an RMSE of 0.0046 cm3 cm−3. Sensitivity and conditional analyses showed that the effects of process-informed inputs and penalties depended on parameter settings and evaluation conditions. These results identify improvements within the LSTM framework, but do not establish superiority over persistence for this site and forecast horizon.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212195

Authors: Hang Zhou Jianming Zhang Sumei Wan Helin Dong Mingwei Du Hang Qiao Qiang Hu Jianduo Bai Nan Cao Zhengjun Cui Guodong Chen

Salt stress is one of the environmental factors that limit the growth and development of cotton. Screening salt-tolerant varieties is of great significance for the utilization of salt-tolerant cotton germplasm resources and efficient production in saline land. This study used seven varieties, TH2 (Tahe 2), TH2311, XTM3 (Xintamian 3), XHM1 (Xinhuimian 1), QH18 (Qianhai 18), XLZ61 (Xinluzhong 61), and ZM63 (Zhongmian 63), to investigate the growth and physiological responses of different varieties to salt stress and to comprehensively evaluate their salt tolerance by setting three salt concentrations (0, 0.3, and 0.6%). The results showed that the K+ content of many varieties was significantly reduced under salt stress, such as ZM63, XHM1, XTM3, and TH2311. However, the K+ content in TH2 was significantly increased under salt stress; at 0.6% salinity, the K+ content in QH18 and XLZ61 did not change significantly compared with the control, which may mean that TH2 has a unique ability to regulate potassium homeostasis under salt stress, while QH18 and XLZ61 can maintain relatively normal potassium levels even in a high salt environment. Furthermore, this study found that salt stress significantly reduced the activity of some antioxidant enzymes in most varieties, but some varieties maintained high enzyme activity levels even at a salinity of 0.3%. Compared to the control, QH18 and TH2311 showed no significant change in SOD activity at 0.3% salinity; ZM63 showed no significant difference in POD activity; and XHM1 showed no significant difference in CAT activity. In addition, this study found that QH18, TH2311, and XHM1 exhibited relatively strong salt tolerance among the seven varieties. The research results provide a basis for the screening and utilization of salt-tolerant cotton varieties. Due to the fact that the research results were obtained based on seedling stage data, further research should be conducted in conjunction with multiple growth stages and field experiments to confirm.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212194

Authors: Zhen Zhang Tingting Lin Yongli Zhang Yu Shi Jisheng Si

Optimum phosphorus (P) management is important for retaining winter wheat grain yield while reducing the environmental risk caused by N loss. P fertilizer strongly influences nitrogen losses, nutrient translocation, and greenhouse gas emissions. However, important uncertainties remain about the optimization of P management to simultaneously achieve yield maximization and yield-scaled Nr loss minimization in winter wheat systems. We conducted a two-season winter wheat rotation with contrasting P fertilization treatments (0, 45, 90, 135 and 180 kg P2O5 ha−1; hereafter, P0, P1, P2, P3, and P4, respectively) per season to assess the effects of the amount of P input on grain yield, nitrogen use efficiency, and the balance of nitrogen/P accumulation and loss. The results showed that an increased P amount significantly boosted winter wheat grain yield, but the tendency slowed down when the input was over 135 kg P2O5 ha−1. Although there was no significant difference in yield between the P2 treatment and the P3 treatment, the phosphorus fertilizer utilization efficiency was significantly higher in the P2 treatment. Specifically, the treatment with 90 units of phosphorus application (P2) produced a significant increase in the yield of wheat compared with the treatment without phosphorus fertilizer application (P0), with a yield increase ranging from 5.96% to 37.86%. Yield gains were primarily associated with a significant increase in the accumulation and translocation of nitrogen and phosphorus, resulting in an increase of 45.85–156% and 40.25–52.46% in the utilization efficiency of phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers. Under the P2 treatment, the nitrogen transport volume, phosphorus transport volume, and nitrogen assimilation volume significantly exceeded those in the other treatments. Under the P2 treatment, the nitrogen and phosphorus transport volumes in the vegetative organs were significantly increased. The P2 treatment led to a significant decline in the emission flux and cumulative emission of nitrous oxide and ammonia volatilization, significantly reducing the global warming potential and greenhouse gas emission intensity. These observations offer empirical and conceptual support for optimizing P application in winter wheat cropping systems, promoting a mutually beneficial scenario for agricultural production and ecological protection.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212192

Authors: Mikhail Divashuk Oksana Borisenko Aleksey Ermolaev Viktoria Voronezhskaya Igor Ryabovol Valentina Savchenko Yana S. Meglitskaya Elena Ryzhenko Dmitrii Savichenko Marina V. Klimushina Oleg Gorbachenko Sergei Frolov Gennady I. Karlov Kristina Petrova Pavel Kroupin Sergey Avdeev

For sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) hybrid breeding, we evaluated 54 paternal lines crossed with three cytoplasmic male-sterile testers. The 162 hybrids were grown for two years at one location and analysed with a plot-level mixed model that separates genotype × year terms. Baker’s ratio was 0.958 for oil content, 0.951 for 1000-seed weight and 0.933 for plant height, and the heritability of the hybrid mean 0.90 and 0.91 for the first two. Without the two confectionery lines, Baker’s ratio for these traits remained 0.877 and 0.907 and heritability 0.72 and 0.83. Paternal general combining ability (GCA) for oil content, 1000-seed weight, plant height and flowering time agreed between the two seasons (concordance 0.71–0.85). For seed yield, additive control was not established (Baker’s ratio 0.440, 95% interval 0.00–0.82); plot error was 3.6 times the genetic variance and paternal GCA was weakly repeatable (r = 0.24). VK101A raised oil content, VK934A 1000-seed weight and plant height, and VA761A lowered plant height. A composite index identified LI18, LI41, LI6, LI53 and LI19 as candidate donors. Paternal lines can be selected on GCA for these three traits; seed yield and the ranking of donors that depends on this yield require testing in more environments.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212193

Authors: Xiaohong Liang Xiang Li Huailin Nan Chunping Xian Pengpeng Cao Songyu Wang Jing Liu Ruidong Zhang Minjia Huang Xiong Cao

Continuous sorghum cropping causes yield decline in semi-arid regions. In a two-year field experiment conducted on plots previously cropped with sorghum for two years, four fertilisation treatments—no fertiliser (SCK), chemical fertiliser (SCF), organic–inorganic compound fertiliser (SOIF) and compound microbial fertiliser (SCMF; SOIF supplemented with Bacillus subtilis and B. licheniformis)—were compared in terms of grain yield, soil physicochemical properties, potential enzyme activities and rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities. Year, treatment and year × treatment effects were tested using mixed models that accounted for repeated measurements of the same plots. The complete SCMF formulation was associated with the highest grain yield (10,108.13 kg ha−1, in 2025), exceeding those under SCK, SCF, and SOIF by 42.95%, 11.47%, and 3.59%, respectively. The SCMF-SOIF comparison, in which N, P2O5, K2O and organic-matter inputs were identical, isolates the microbial inoculants; its yield increment was small and not significant in either year (4.27% and 3.59%), so an inoculant-specific yield benefit was not demonstrated. Compared with SOIF, SCMF had higher alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity in both years and higher sucrase (SUS) activity (+36.80%) and available nitrogen (AN; +21.11%) in 2025. In 2025, SOIF and SCMF reduced the topsoil bulk density relative to SCK and SCF, and SCMF shifted the aggregate-size distribution towards the 2–0.25-mm fraction (+47.45–112.62%). Fertilisation altered the composition, but not the alpha diversity, of rhizosphere communities; the treatment effect was larger and more independent of multivariate dispersion for fungi (R2 = 0.167, p = 0.009) than for bacteria (R2 = 0.113, p = 0.049). The fungal response represents an overall treatment-associated compositional difference with weaker statistical evidence in the second year, because treatment differences were significant only in 2024 when each year was tested separately. Nitrosospira, a genus containing members previously associated with ammonia oxidation, was consistently enriched under SCMF, although nitrification was not measured. Overall, the yield benefit was attributable mainly to organic–inorganic fertilisation, whereas inoculant-associated differences were found in potential enzyme activities and fungal community composition rather than in grain yield.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212191

Authors: Cintya Mikaelly Pereira Gaia Souza Baltazar Cirino Júnior Paulo Ricardo Chagas Oliveira Francismária Freitas de Lima Francimar Maik da Silva Morais José Artur de Oliveira Casimiro Antônio Cláudio dos Santos Pinto Edicleide Macedo da Silva Vladimir Batista Figueirêdo Fred Augusto Lourêdo de Brito José Francismar de Medeiros Júlio César DoVale Glauber Henrique de Sousa Nunes

Water scarcity limits melon (Cucumis melo L.) productivity in the Brazilian semi-arid region. In this context, the morphophysiological, nutritional, and fruit quality responses of five genotypes (A-09, A-52, Nantais Oblong, PMR6, and PI 234607) subjected to three water replacement levels (50%, 75%, and 100% of field capacity) were evaluated using a randomized block design. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated no genotype × water replacement interaction (p > 0.05) for most variables, demonstrating parallel responses to drought. Water replacement at 50% reduced mean fruit weight by 45.7%, leaf dry mass by 40.5%, and total dry mass by 34.0%. The 50% water deficit increased intrinsic water use efficiency by 31.7% and electrolyte leakage by 52.7%, while increasing leaf phosphorus and potassium concentrations by 29.8% and 35.4%, respectively, due to a tissue concentration effect. Soluble solids and titratable acidity remained stable. Genotypes A-09 and A-52 exhibited the highest total dry mass of both shoots and roots. It is concluded that water deficit proportionally reduces growth and yield without altering fruit quality. Therefore, genetic improvement programs should prioritize the selection of genotypes with high baseline performance, as demonstrated by A-09 and A-52.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212190

Authors: Hao Li Beitao Xie Wenxue Duan Liming Zhang Haiyan Zhang

Anthocyanin accumulation is an important quality trait in purple sweet potato, but its associations with drought responses across tissues and developmental stages remain unclear. Jizishu 1 (JZ1) and Xuzishu 8 (XZ8) were evaluated under control (D0), moderate drought (D1), and severe drought (D2) in 2019 and 2020, with three independent replicate tanks per genotype × water regime per year. Anthocyanin content, physiological traits, endogenous hormones, and anthocyanin-related gene expression were measured across sampling stages. Drought generally reduced leaf relative water content and increased relative electrolyte conductivity. Leaf anthocyanin content generally peaked at 80 d, whereas storage-root anthocyanin continued to accumulate through 120 d. Hormone contents varied with sampling stage, antioxidant enzyme activities generally increased during early and middle stages, and proline and soluble sugars accumulated during later stages. Both D1 and D2 generally increased IbCHI, IbANS, and IbMYB1 expression relative to matched D0 controls, with D1 often producing higher expression than D2. Under D1, leaf IbANS expression in XZ8 and IbMYB1 expression in JZ1 reached 21.08- and 23.13-fold relative to D0 at 80 d, respectively. In storage roots, the corresponding values for IbANS and IbMYB1 in XZ8 were 17.54- and 16.98-fold at 100 d. These findings indicate that anthocyanin accumulation was associated with broader physiological and transcriptional changes under drought, with distinct tissue- and stage-dependent patterns.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212189

Authors: Romina A. Verdenelli Florencia M. Barbero María F. Dominchin Mariana Maury Valeria S. Faggioli Silvina Vargas Gil José M. Meriles

Azoxystrobin is a widely used strobilurin fungicide, yet how soil microorganisms respond to overexposure in long-term monocultures, and whether organic amendments can mitigate that response, remains poorly understood. We ran a 30-day greenhouse experiment with soil from a maize monoculture maintained since 1975 under conventional tillage (LC) and no-tillage (SD). Azoxystrobin was applied at the recommended (DR1X, 5 mg kg−1) and tenfold (DR10X) doses, with or without vermicompost (VC, 50 g kg−1). Analyses included 16S rRNA gene sequencing, fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) profiling and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). DR10X significantly reduced the relative abundance of Gram-positive biomarkers in both systems and increased the fungi/bacteria ratio by 50% under LC, without reducing total microbial biomass. VC increased pH, electrical conductivity and, without fungicide, richness, and reversed the DR10X increase in the fungi/bacteria ratio under LC, but Chloroflexi and Planctomycetota reached their lowest relative abundances in VC-amended fungicide treatments under LC. Shannon diversity was unaffected, whereas Pielou’s evenness increased only under LC with DR10X, with or without VC. Soil chemistry significantly predicted FAME biomarkers only under SD; most other PLS-SEM paths were not significant. Microbial responses to azoxystrobin depended on soil management, and VC effects were taxon-specific rather than protective.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212188

Authors: José A. D. López-Coronado Michael W. Heaven Edward Nagul Joe L. Jacobs Sharon R. Aarons

Ensuring the agricultural use of chemically treated manure is not detrimental to pasture productivity or soil health is key to integrating coagulation–flocculation into dairy effluent management systems. This study evaluated the agronomic performance of manure solids treated with polyferric sulphate (PFS) or a tannin-based coagulant/flocculant (Tanfloc SG®) in south-eastern Australia. In two independent experiments using PFS (2022) and Tanfloc (2023), fifteen perennial ryegrass plots (1.5 × 2.5 m) were assigned to treatments: Control (no fertilizer), untreated liquid manure (96 t ha−1), treated solids (96 t ha−1), or urea (100 kg N ha−1). Over nine months, pasture dry matter (DM) yield, soil properties, plant chemical composition, and nutrient uptake were measured. Short-term measurements of CO2, CH4, N2O, and NH3 concentrations were also undertaken. In both experiments, treated solids, urea, and untreated liquid manure achieved a higher pasture DM yield than control, with no statistical difference among treatments. PFS increased plant S and soil Fe, while Tanfloc increased plant Cl and soil P; relative to untreated liquid manure. Treated-solids application reduced N2O and NH3 concentrations at sampling times; however, further research is required to quantify gas fluxes. Our findings demonstrate PFS- and Tanfloc-treated solids are not detrimental to pasture growth and nutritive value or soil properties.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212187

Authors: Carolaini Campos da Silva Renato Fernando Amabile Bárbara Soares Aires França Juaci Vitoria Malaquias Marcelo Fagioli Arlini Rodrigues Fialho Oscar José Smiderle

Pre-harvest desiccation is widely used in sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) production to accelerate harvest and improve crop management; however, comparative information on the effects of different desiccant herbicides applied at distinct phenological stages on seed physiological quality under Brazilian Cerrado conditions remains limited. This study evaluated the effects of glufosinate-ammonium and diquat applied at the R8 and R9 growth stages on the physiological quality of seeds from the sunflower hybrid BRS 323. A completely randomized design with five treatments and four replications was used. Seeds exhibited primary dormancy after harvest; therefore, initial viability was confirmed by the tetrazolium test, and physiological quality was assessed after 30 days of dry storage using germination, accelerated aging, electrical conductivity, seedling dry mass after accelerated aging, and field seedling emergence tests. Data were subjected to analysis of variance, Tukey’s test (p ≤ 0.05), and principal component analysis (PCA). All treatments produced seed lots with germination percentages above the 75% minimum standard required for sunflower seed commercialization in Brazil. Glufosinate-ammonium applied at R8 significantly reduced seed germination and vigor, whereas diquat applied at the same stage maintained high physiological performance comparable to that of the untreated control. Applications at R9 preserved seed physiological quality regardless of the herbicide. The first two principal components of the PCA jointly explained 63.2% of the total variation and supported the univariate findings. Pre-harvest desiccation proved to be a technically viable strategy for sunflower seed production, with applications at R9 providing the greatest preservation of seed vigor; when desiccation at R8 is required, diquat was superior to glufosinate-ammonium.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212186

Authors: Oleg S. Yuzikhin Irina L. Krasnobaeva Julia A. Titova Elena L. Gasich Anatoliy V. Dobrodumov Alexander P. Yakimov Kirill B. Nerinovski Alexander I. Shaposhnikov Polina V. Guro Edgar A. Sekste Anna L. Sazanova Andrey A. Belimov

Phytopathogenic fungi of the genus Alternaria cause black spot (helminthosporiasis) disease and therefore apply to develop bioherbicides for controlling weeds and illegal vegetation of narcotic plants such as opium poppy (Papaver somniferum subsp. somniferum). In this report, Alternaria papavericola strain 1.39 was identified using sequencing of the ITS region and characterized. Strain 1.39 produced auxins and abscisic acid, did not produce salicylic, jasmonic, or gibberellic (GA3) acids, and did not metabolize any of these phytohormones. Strain 1.39 produced siderophores but showed no 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate deaminase activity and did not solubilize phosphates Ca3(PO4)2, Ca-phytate, Al3PO4, or Fe3PO4. Extracts from the culture liquid of strain 1.39 caused necrosis in leaves of poppy and, to a lesser extent, on creeping thistle, tomato, and wheat leaves. Strain 1.39 inhibited poppy seed germination energy by 80%, reduced shoot biomass by 77%, and resulted in the death of 75% of poppy plants in a pot experiment. The phytotoxin was isolated from the culture liquid of this fungus using chromatographic methods. Detailed study of structure of this phytotoxin by a complex of physicochemical methods revealed that it is (+)-cis-sclerosporide(1S,2S,3S,4R,5S,6R)-2,3,5-trihydroxy-4,6-dimethoxycyclohexyl-(1R,5S,6S)-5-isopropyl-8-methylbicyclo[4.4.0]deca-2,7-diene-2-carboxylate). The results showed possibility for application of A. papavericola 1.39 as bioherbicide against opium poppy.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212185

Authors: Qin Chen Xiangyan Ma Hu Zhang Shanpo Yang Qiyu Chang Jinsheng Wang Wenju Gao Juyun Zheng Quanjia Chen

To address the challenges of large-scale drought-resistance phenotyping in cotton—specifically the difficulty of assessment and the high cost of destructive sampling—this study developed a high-throughput evaluation framework for the Drought Resistance Coefficient of Effective Boll Number (DCEBN) in Gossypium hirsutum (upland cotton). This framework integrates time-series UAV-based multispectral technology with interpretable machine learning algorithms. Based on field drought experiments conducted in Xinjiang during 2023–2024 using 150 core germplasm accessions, we extracted and calculated the relative response ratios of canopy multispectral vegetation indices (DCVIs). We compared the predictive performance of K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Support Vector Regression (SVR), Random Forest (RF), and Stacking ensemble algorithms, while employing the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) framework to quantify the contribution of each vegetation index to DCEBN prediction. This framework provides a practical, non-destructive approach for large-scale DCEBN prediction and for identifying key spectral indicators of drought tolerance in cotton. The results demonstrated that time-series multispectral features sensitively captured the dynamic response of cotton to water deficit; notably, ensemble learning models (RF and Stacking) exhibited superior fitting accuracy and generalization capabilities in predicting DCEBN. SHAP analysis identified NRI, SCCCI, MTVI2, and EVI as the four key indices contributing most significantly to the predictions, offering interpretable guidance for reducing spectral redundancy in future phenotyping. Validation using extreme-phenotype genotypes further confirmed that changes in these four indices effectively reflected the decline in photosynthetic rate and the reduction in effective boll number under drought stress, demonstrating that the model can both predict DCEBN and identify extreme germplasm for breeding use.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212184

Authors: Claudio Hideo Martins da Costa Thiago Araújo Barbosa Henrique Mariano Souza Ubiratan Sandoval de Carvalho Simério Carlos Silva Cruz Piero Iori Letusa Momesso Euller Ribeiro Côrtes Leonel Tiara Moraes Guimarães

Long-term crop diversification can alter soil functioning and crop performance in the Brazilian Cerrado, but the extent to which these responses persist across cropping systems remains unclear. This study assessed four soybean-based systems maintained under no-tillage from 2017 to 2025: soybean–maize, soybean–millet, soybean–palisadegrass, and soybean–maize + palisadegrass. Soil was sampled once after the 2025 harvest at 0–0.10 m, with four field replicates per system, and evaluated for chemical attributes, enzyme activity, and soil quality indices using the BioAS framework. Soybean and maize grain yields were evaluated annually, and cumulative yields were calculated over eight growing seasons. Soil P and K were higher in the maize-based systems, whereas organic carbon was greater under palisadegrass and maize + palisadegrass. β-Glucosidase activity was 27% higher under palisadegrass and 42% higher under maize + palisadegrass than under sole maize. IQS Biological was also higher in the palisadegrass-based systems, while IQS Chemical did not differ among treatments. Annual soybean yield differed among cropping systems and growing seasons, but the system × season interaction was not significant. Cumulative soybean yield was 6.8% higher under palisadegrass and 6.5% higher under maize + palisadegrass than under soybean–maize. Maize yield did not differ between sole maize and maize + palisadegrass. These results indicate that including palisadegrass in soybean-based systems was associated with improved biological soil quality and greater soybean productivity, while intercropping maize with palisadegrass maintained maize yield.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212182

Authors: Jiejie Shi Yiting Chen Qiang Wu Liangying Han Huacai Chen

Routine counting of the tea small green leafhopper (Empoasca onukii Matsuda) requires repeated visual inspection of the leaves, as adults and nymphs are small, mobile, and often partially concealed. A handheld device was developed in this study to take close-up pictures and run the optimized YOLOv8 detector (YOLOv8-SED) locally on a Raspberry Pi 4B. A macro lens and a fixed near-field LED were used to achieve a more stable imaging condition for single-leaf inspection. YOLOv8-SED introduces a C2f-SPD feature block, efficient channel attention (ECA), and DySample upsampling. Eight configurations were evaluated with five seeds on 785 annotated images. YOLOv8-SED achieved a mean precision, recall, F1, mAP@0.5 and mAP@0.5:0.95 of 90.3%, 97.7%, 93.9%, 95.3%, and 70.5%, respectively. Session-grouped retraining yielded 90.1% mAP@0.5, compared with 83.5% for YOLOv8n. The complete embedded image cycle averaged 1.34 s. Ten groups of 100 leaves were selected for paired field observations. Raw counts were distinguished from operator-assisted counts after offline duplicate and false-detection review by the same observer who knew the manual reference counts. The prototype supports local detection and offline recording; broader validation and complete survey-time measurements are needed before general deployment.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212183

Authors: Rachele Tamburino Paolo Iovieno Edoardo Gatti Gianpaolo Bertazza Antonina Lina Matina

Plant-derived biostimulants are gaining interest as sustainable tools to improve crop performance and quality. However, the potential of many wild plant species remains largely unexplored. This study characterized the biochemical composition of Silene vulgaris (syn. Silene inflata) leaves and roots and evaluated the biostimulant effects of their crude extracts, applied by irrigation at 1 and 10 mL/L, on greenhouse-grown lettuce (Lactuca sativa L. cv. Canasta). S. vulgaris leaves showed higher contents of proteins, chlorophylls, phenolic compounds, ascorbic acid and saponins than roots. The effects on lettuce varied according to the S. vulgaris organ used to prepare extracts, extract concentration and lettuce trait assessed. Leaf extract at 1 mL/L increased dry biomass, chlorophyll, protein, soluble sugar and phenolic contents, as well as antioxidant activity in lettuce, whereas at 10 mL/L it increased dry biomass and phenolic content. Fresh biomass remained unaffected. Root extract at 1 mL/L increased dry biomass, phenolic content and antioxidant activity, whereas at 10 mL/L it enhanced soluble sugar and phenolic contents. Overall, both leaf and root extracts influenced lettuce growth-related and biochemical traits in a concentration- and trait-dependent manner. These findings support further investigation of S. vulgaris as a potential source of plant-derived biostimulants for horticultural applications.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212181

Authors: Adelina Venig Cosmin Alexandru Mihai

This exploratory study examined fruit production, dry matter content, mineral composition, and estimated nutrient removal in three nectarine (Prunus persica var. nucipersica) cultivars during the 2025 growing season in a commercial intensive orchard in northwestern Romania. ‘Big Top’, ‘Venus’, and ‘Cora’ grafted onto GF 677 rootstock were tested under uniform orchard management circumstances, which included fertigation with a water-soluble NPK 15-15-15 fertilizer. ‘Big Top’ had the largest fruit yield (34.82 t ha−1) and average fruit weight, whereas ‘Cora’ had the highest dry matter content and mean concentrations of N, P, K, Ca, and Mg in the studied fruit tissues. ‘Venus’ generally displayed intermediate values. ‘Cora’ also had the highest estimated nutrient removal per ton and hectare of harvested fruit, while ‘Big Top’ had the lowest values. Potassium was the biggest component of estimated nutrient removal across all three cultivars. These descriptive patterns demonstrate the need to take into account fruit mineral composition as well as yield when evaluating nutrient removal. However, the mineral analyzes did not include fruit stones; therefore, the values do not represent total whole-fruit nutrient export. Given the study’s single-year, single-site design, the findings should be viewed as preliminary, as they do not establish statistically significant cultivar effects or warrant cultivar-specific fertilizer recommendations. To examine the consistency and practical applicability of these findings, additional multi-year investigations using thorough fruit analyzes and adequate statistical evaluations are required.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212180

Authors: Fusong Han Lizhi Wang Muhua Fan Wei Sun Gang Fu Huxiao Qi Dunzhu Yujie Dawa Qiongda Xuxuan Deng Huiling Wang

Observation-window length can shape estimates of ecosystem temporal stability, yet its influence on belowground soil properties remains less explored. Using annual gridded soil datasets reconstructed from random forest models for alpine grasslands of the Qinghai–Xizang Plateau (2000–2022), we quantified the temporal stability of soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, their stoichiometric ratios (C:N, C:P, and N:P), and pH across 3–23-year sliding windows. Analyses covered a climate-only scenario, a combined climate–NDVI scenario, and their ratio-based contrast. Estimated stability declined nonlinearly with increasing window length, with progressively smaller changes at longer windows. Exponential models described these relationships well (R2 ≥ 0.96), although decay rates and fitted asymptotic values differed among soil variables and scenario representations. Time-window length and climatic temporal stability together accounted for at least 87% of the variation in soil stability estimates within the common window-based statistical framework. The strong sensitivity of short-window estimates and gradual asymptotic behavior at longer windows highlight how the mean-to-standard-deviation metric captures temporal variation across scales. These results underline the importance of explicitly considering observation-window length when comparing soil stability estimates and provide a basis for examining the scale dependence of soil properties under changing environmental conditions.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212179

Authors: Eva Sánchez-Hernández Carmen Gómez-Lama Cabanás Antonio Valverde-Corredor Carlos Casanova-Muñoz Jesús Martín-Gil Pablo Martín-Ramos

Fusarium wilt of banana, caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc), threatens global production, and although several fungicides inhibit Foc under controlled conditions, none provides reliable field control. We evaluated two complete chitosan oligosaccharide (COS)-based nanocarrier formulations, loaded with Rubia tinctorum or Uncaria tomentosa extracts, against Foc subtropical and tropical race 4 (STR4, TR4) in vitro, and against TR4 in a preliminary plant assay. Both formulations inhibited both races, with EC50 values of 320.0–571.7 µg·mL−1 and no difference in potency between them. In a descriptive time-kill assay with two tubes per condition, no colonies were recovered from 48 h onwards with the R. tinctorum formulation, whereas the U. tomentosa formulation still yielded 3–7 CFU·mL−1 at 72 h. Applied as a single root dip to TR4-challenged ‘Grand Nain’ plants, in one controlled-environment run of nine plants per treatment, with one tray and one application batch per treatment, the R. tinctorum formulation gave a standardized area under the disease progress curve 34.9% lower than the inoculated control, whereas the 7.8% difference for U. tomentosa was not distinguishable from that control; incidence remained 100% in every inoculated group. The plant comparison is an observation to be confirmed rather than a replicated estimate of efficacy, and cannot be attributed to any single formulation component; it identifies the R. tinctorum formulation as the candidate for independently replicated testing.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212178

Authors: Zuoqian Wang Yongfei Xu Huishuang Yi Xiaolin Yang Xiangqian Chang Ting Xu Liang Lv

Peach gummosis, primarily caused by Botryosphaeria dothidea, leads to progressive tree decline, yet how the host-associated microbiome differs between symptomatic and asymptomatic trees remains poorly understood. Sampling was conducted in a commercial orchard in Zaoyang, Hubei Province, China. Symptomatic trees were peach cultivar ‘Zhongtao 3’ and asymptomatic trees were nectarine cultivar ‘Qiuhongzhu’, grown in the same orchard. We profiled bacterial (16S rRNA) and fungal (ITS) communities from bulk soil, rhizosphere soil, root rhizoplane, root endosphere, basal and mid-trunk bark, and basal and mid-trunk xylem, and examined compositional shifts, predicted functional potential, and co-occurrence networks. Disease status significantly altered community composition in both kingdoms. Beta dispersion increased only in symptomatic trunk tissues, indicating that community destabilization is localized at the infection site. LEfSe and functional analyses showed that diseased tissues were depleted of biocontrol-relevant genera (Bacillus spp., Streptomyces spp.) and negatively correlated with function-predicted cellulolysis and iron respiration, while pathogen-associated fungi (Neocucurbitaria spp., Xenoacremonium spp., Neocosmospora spp.) were enriched. Co-occurrence networks revealed that bacterial networks were simpler in symptomatic trees: bacterial edge number declined by 39.0% versus 19.6% for fungi, accompanied by reduced cross-kingdom connectivity. Alpha diversity remained largely unchanged. These findings demonstrate that difference were spatially structured and taxonomically asymmetric erosion of interaction complexity rather than a uniform collapse of diversity. Bacterial connectivity in symptomatic tissues is a candidate target for microbiome-informed management of peach gummosis.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212177

Authors: Chunlei Li Xinyue Zhang Liangping Huang Jing Ma Peifu Xiao Xiaohu Liu Yang Xu Meng Li Meiya Liu Qunfeng Zhang

Phosphorus (P) availability is a primary constraint on tea (Camellia sinensis) production in acidic soils, where the majority of P is immobilized as insoluble Fe–P and Al–P complexes. This review synthesizes current understanding of the tea plant P nutrition chain—from soil P cycling and microbial mobilization to root uptake, systemic signaling, and ultimately the regulation of quality-related metabolism. Recent molecular studies in tea have identified several P-responsive regulatory modules; however, many mechanisms remain based on a limited number of cultivars and controlled experimental systems. Phosphorus availability can influence the relative accumulation of nitrogen-containing and phenylpropanoid-derived quality metabolites; however, the direction and magnitude of these responses depend on genotype, P supply level, developmental stage, and environmental conditions. A universal theanine–catechin trade-off cannot yet be generalized across tea germplasm. A distinctive P–Al coadaptation mechanism enables tea plants to thrive in acidic soils, where low Al concentrations stimulate root growth and enhance P acquisition, further linking soil chemistry to quality outcomes. We propose a research roadmap integrating molecular characterization, breeding, and environmental management to translate mechanistic understanding into sustainable P management for tea production.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212176

Authors: Qinchun Li Yanyan Li Fanping Xu

Mirabilis jalapa L., an ornamental plant, exhibits robust adaptability to diverse environmental conditions and is widely distributed across various regions of China. Seeds from different geographical origins may differ in growth and Cd accumulation characteristics. The present study aimed to evaluate differences in cadmium (Cd) accumulation among M. jalapa L. from four seed sources originating from geographically distinct regions with contrasting climatic and edaphic conditions (Heilongjiang, Gansu, Jiangsu, and Inner Mongolia). Pot experiments were conducted using both artificially Cd-spiked soils and field-contaminated soils, along with hydroponic cultures. Cd concentrations in roots, stems, and leaves were measured, and accumulation capacity was assessed using growth parameters, bioconcentration factors (BCF), translocation factors (TF), and tolerance indices. The results revealed that the Jiangsu (JS) seed sources exhibited significantly higher Cd BCF and tolerance indices compared to the other seed sources. In spiked soils with Cd concentrations below 50 mg·kg−1, no significant differences in Cd extraction rates were observed among seed sources; however, the extraction rate declined markedly when soil Cd exceeded this threshold. In field-contaminated soils, no significant variation in Cd extraction rates was detected among seed sources. A significant negative correlation was identified between Cd extraction rate and soil Cd content. Under hydroponic conditions, the Inner Mongolia (NM) seed sources exhibited a higher root tip number and tolerance index than the other seed sources. Integrated across the pot and hydroponic experiments, these results indicate that the Cd accumulation and tolerance strategies of different M. jalapa L. seed sources were different. Further research is needed to verify the internal mechanism. Soil Cd concentration threshold and Cd speciation differences are critical factors determining the phytoremediation efficiency of M. jalapa L., and low-concentration Cd-contaminated soil is more suitable for its phytoremediation application. Therefore, the selection of appropriate seed sources should be matched to soil Cd level and Cd speciation for sustainable phytoremediation. These findings improve our understanding of the variation in Cd accumulation among M. jalapa L. seed sources from different geographical origins and provide new insights into the phytoremediation of Cd-contaminated soils, as well as the selection of suitable seed sources for the sustainable utilization of contaminated agricultural and urban soils.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212175

Authors: Chin-Song Wu Kai-Ying Chiu Tzu-Che Lin

Water-saving irrigation can substantially reduce water inputs in rice production, but excessive soil drying may impair physiological activity during grain filling and reduce yield. This study evaluated continuous flooding (CF), moderate water-saving irrigation (SW; −20 kPa), and intensified water-saving irrigation (IW; −40 kPa) in rice. Flag-leaf relative chlorophyll content and net photosynthetic rate, superior-grain development, yield components, grain yield, irrigation water input, and water productivity (WP) were evaluated. SW reduced irrigation water input by 57.4% relative to CF while maintaining a comparable grain yield (4545.0 vs. 4550.7 kg ha−1), resulting in the highest WP (0.54 kg m−3). In contrast, IW reduced grain yield to 3694.4 kg ha−1. During late grain filling, SW maintained flag-leaf chlorophyll status and photosynthetic activity comparable to CF, whereas IW showed greater reductions at 28 and 35 days after flowering. IW also exhibited lower relative grain volume during the middle-to-late grain-filling period. Plot-level regression analyses showed positive associations among flag-leaf chlorophyll status, photosynthetic rate, relative grain volume, and final grain yield. These results indicate that moderate soil water tension can substantially reduce irrigation requirements while maintaining late-stage physiological activity, grain development, and yield, whereas intensified soil drying provides limited additional water savings at the expense of crop productivity.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212174

Authors: Huijing Ju Haoyue Chen Peining Li Kuijun Dong Yinghua Zhang Zhimin Wang Zhencai Sun

Multi-environment trials involving 12 wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars were conducted during the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 growing seasons at multiple locations in the northern Huang-Huai-Hai wheat region of China. Tai’an (TA), Weifang (WF), and Wuqiao (WQ) were evaluated in both growing seasons, whereas Gaocheng (GC) was included only in 2023–2024 and Xinji (XJ) only in 2024–2025. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that genotype (G), environment (E), and the genotype-by-environment (G × E) interaction significantly influenced grain yield. To elucidate yield–quality synergy, regional adaptability, and the spectral response characteristics at key phenological stages, we integrated yield-component analysis, the genotype main effect plus genotype-by-environment interaction (GGE) biplot, the additive main effects and multiplicative interactions (AMMI) model, yield-quality synergy, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)–based multispectral monitoring. The mean grain yield across cultivars was 8966.0 kg ha−1. The combined GGE and AMMI analyses indicated that JM765, JMU68, and JM115 achieved favorable combinations of grain yield and environmental stability; JM379 had the highest pooled mean yield but showed greater environmental sensitivity. Based on grain yield and comprehensive quality scores, the tested wheat cultivars were classified into four distinct types: synergistic, high-yield, high-quality, and general. UAV multispectral analysis further revealed stage-dependent associations between vegetation indices and agronomic traits. At anthesis, the simple ratio red-edge index (SR-REG) and green atmospherically resistant index (GARI) showed the strongest positive associations with grain yield. At the dough stage, the nitrogen reflectance index (NRI) and simplified canopy chlorophyll content index (S-CCCI) showed the strongest positive associations with grain yield and grain protein content, respectively. These indices were therefore highlighted as candidate trait-associated spectral indicators. Overall, the study identified cultivars with favorable combinations of grain yield and environmental stability. Stage-specific spectral associations with grain yield and protein content were also identified, supporting cultivar evaluation and UAV-assisted high-throughput phenotyping in the northern Huang Huai Hai wheat region or in other similar regions.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212173

Authors: Yahui Shen Quanxin Zhang Jianyu Wang Jiyao Kang Yunting Zhang Yongfang Cao Wei Liu Hongxiu Ma Qingfang Xu

This study investigated the regulatory effects of Bacillus cereus S1 combined with cinnamaldehyde on microbial community dynamics, forage nutritional quality, and virulence-gene-associated molecular risks during the aerobic storage of alfalfa hay with 30% moisture content. Storage experiments were performed aerobically at ambient temperature (25–30 °C). Three treatments were established: a blank control (CK), single-strain inoculation with B. cereus S1 (BS), and the combined application of B. cereus S1 plus cinnamaldehyde (BC). Sampling was conducted on days 0, 8, and 32. Metagenomic sequencing was performed, followed by joint functional annotation using the Carbohydrate-Active EnZymes (CAZy) and Pathogen–Host Interaction (PHI) databases to decipher how the BC treatment modulated microbial succession, nutritional traits, and molecular-level biosafety risks. At day 32 of storage, spoilage-related genera, including Aspergillus, Acinetobacter, and Oceanobacillus, proliferated extensively in the CK group. Both BS and BC suppressed the massive proliferation of undesirable microbes and stabilized community structure, with BC exhibiting the best regulatory performance. The BC treatment drove a clear community succession, where the dominant genus shifted from Enterococcus toward the inoculated functional strain Bacillus cereus S1. Functional gene profiling revealed continuous enrichment of AA10 family lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs)—key cellulose-degrading enzymes—in the BC group, accompanied by significant reductions in neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and acid detergent fiber (ADF). Meanwhile, accumulation of lethal and increased-virulence PHI genes was markedly restrained. The relative abundance of Aspergillus was positively correlated with high-risk PHI genes (r = 0.556, p < 0.01). On day 32, the BC group achieved a dry matter preservation rate of 94.22%, crude protein (CP) content of 28.91%, and an in vitro dry matter digestibility of 90.88%. This work represents the first mechanistic investigation of the combined Bacillus-cinnamaldehyde system specifically for 30%-moisture aerobic-stored alfalfa hay. Our results demonstrate that this combined treatment reshapes microbial communities, constrains toxigenic fungal proliferation, improves forage quality, and mitigates molecular-level biosafety risks. It provides mechanistic insights for developing green bioregulators for high-moisture forage storage.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212172

Authors: Yanfang Chen Xinzhe Lu Yan Xu Kaifeng Fu Guohui Zhan Chunlei Huang Zhonghua Jian Tingqun Li Ruosong Zou Rui Sun Linwei Xu Xiaochun Ji

To address the challenge of synergistically mitigating multiple constraints—structure, nutrients, and microorganisms—in newly reclaimed farmland, and to comprehensively improve soil quality and crop productivity, a field experiment was conducted. Treatments with different combinations and application rates of microbial agents, organic fertilizer, modified biochar, and minerals were established. The effects of these treatments on soil physicochemical and biological properties, as well as wheat growth, were analyzed to identify key synergistic measures and their mechanisms for rapidly enhancing soil quality and crop productivity. Results showed that the integrated treatment (MCN), which consisted of organic fertilizer at 6 t ha−1, modified biochar at 1.5 t ha−1, minerals at 0.75 t ha−1, and an appropriate amount of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens agent, was the optimal scheme balancing improvement efficacy and economic benefits. MCN significantly improved soil physical structure and chemical nutrient status. Compared to other treatments, it reduced bulk density by 0.14–0.18 g cm−3, increased large aggregate content by the greatest margin (12 g kg−1), raised field water-holding capacity by 13.0–22.7 g kg−1, elevated pH by 0.41–0.87, and increased soil organic matter by 0.55–4.43 g kg−1, while effectively enhancing phosphorus availability and calcium content. MCN also effectively reshaped the soil microbial community toward a healthier ecological state. Compared to other treatments, it markedly increased the absolute abundance of beneficial bacterial classes, with Fibrobacteria being 2.0–9.4 times more abundant. It also increased β-glucosidase activity by 14.4–73.9 nmol g−1 h−1 and markedly enhanced both α- and β-diversity. Meanwhile, MCN significantly promoted wheat growth indicators such as plant height and spike length, and the yield was more than 3.5 times that of the NPK treatment. This study constructed a cascading efficiency path for improving soil quality and crop productivity in newly reclaimed farmland using PLS-SEM: The integrated treatment improved soil physical structure and provided balanced chemical nutrients and energy, thereby promoting microbial community restructuring and enhanced activity. Subsequently, changes in the microbial community may have further improved soil physicochemical properties and strengthened positive soil–crop interactions, ultimately leading to simultaneous improvements in crop yield and plant growth. The model had a good fit (GOF = 0.70, R2 = 0.90), and through RDA, PCoA, and Pearson correlation, the synergistic efficiency mechanism of four materials (fertilizer, organic fertilizer, biochar, and minerals) in improving soil quality and crop productivity was analyzed. Based on this, this study established a mechanism model for improving soil quality and crop growth in newly reclaimed farmland through integrated treatment, providing a theoretical basis and practical paradigms for improving soil quality and achieving crop yield increase in newly reclaimed farmland.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212170

Authors: Olga V. Doroshenko Mikhail V. Golub Oksana Yu. Kremneva Ksenia E. Gasiyan

Powdery mildew, caused by Blumeria graminis, is a major foliar disease of winter wheat, and its development depends closely on weather and spore count. This exploratory study combines spore counts measured with a portable impactor-type spore trap with hourly meteorological data. Observations were made on five winter wheat varieties over three growing seasons in South Russia. Air and soil temperature, relative humidity, vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and precipitation were aggregated over sliding windows of 1–21 days and lagged periods, and seasonal epidemic metrics (infection pressure, stress index, rainfall index and phenology-weather index) were calculated. Predictors were selected by Spearman correlation corrected for pseudo-replication and a stability-selection method based on Elastic Net. Logarithmic conidial concentration was modelled by lagged regression, and disease severity by a two-part hurdle model. The combined model is able to replicate the contrasting epidemics of the three seasons in the fitted data, and its occurrence part was inverted to obtain provisional, weather-dependent spore concentration thresholds for given infection probabilities. However, these model-derived thresholds require validation using data from different seasons and plots before they can be used to inform decisions regarding the timing of fungicide applications.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212171

Authors: Yongjun Xiong Yunbin Li Rentao Liao Chun Lin Le Shi Mo Yang Yan’e Xiong Junwei Zhao Shaohui Chen Wenhua Dongchen Zhengjie Liu

Nitrogen application rate and topping are two key agronomic factors affecting tobacco leaf quality, but the synergistic regulatory mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to elucidate the physiological and molecular mechanisms by which nitrogen application rate and topping synergistically regulate tobacco leaf quality, and to identify key candidate genes involved in nicotine biosynthesis. Using the tobacco cultivar K326, three nitrogen application levels were established: low (0 kg/ha), medium (120 kg/ha), and high (210 kg/ha). Agronomic traits and rhizosphere soil physicochemical properties were monitored, carbon and nitrogen metabolism enzyme activities were measured before and after topping, and mature leaf chemical composition was determined, integrated with transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses. The results showed that medium nitrogen achieved high yield while enhancing organic matter turnover efficiency, reducing rhizosphere water-soluble chloride content, and alleviating soil acidification and ammonium–potassium ion uptake competition caused by excessive fertilization. Combined with topping, it significantly enhanced carbon and nitrogen metabolism, promoted starch-to-soluble-sugar conversion, and increased nicotine accumulation, thereby optimizing leaf chemical composition. Integrated transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses revealed that medium nitrogen combined with topping exerted the most pronounced effects on gene expression and metabolite accumulation. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNAs) identified a module highly correlated with nicotine biosynthesis, with hub genes mainly annotated as cytochrome P450 and terpene synthase family members. In conclusion, this study elucidated the molecular mechanisms by which the combination of medium nitrogen application and topping, as an integrated agronomic practice, improves tobacco leaf quality through coordinating carbon-nitrogen metabolism and optimizing chemical composition, and identified key candidate genes potentially regulating nicotine biosynthesis, providing a theoretical basis for nitrogen fertilizer management and high-quality cultivation of tobacco.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212169

Authors: Cholet Nyangoma Atulinda Md Nasim Reza Sakib Robin Sung Du Yoon Hyeunseok Choi Dong Hee Noh Hae-Min Lee Sun-Ok Chung

Warm-season greenhouse crops such as tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and paprika (Capsicum annuum L.) require nutrient supply strategies that respond dynamically to temperature, solar radiation, vapor pressure deficit (VPD), root zone water status, and electrical conductivity (EC). This systematic review assessed four operational strategies: (1) solar radiation-proportional irrigation; (2) radiation-rate-based volume and EC adjustment; (3) supply–drainage and substrate-feedback control; and (4) temperature, humidity, and VPD-based supervisory correction. Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, and MDPI were searched on 15 August 2026 for studies published from 2010 onward, yielding 4088 records (2326 after removal of duplicates). Studies were eligible if they addressed a controlled-environment production system, a warm-season crop, a nutrient-management component, and the use of sensing, automated control, models or decision-support systems, or IoT/AI tools. After title/abstract screening and full-text assessment, 90 studies were included: 29 studies from the database search and 61 studies identified by manual searching of publisher platforms, the three other references were from textbooks. Radiation-based approaches provide practical feedforward estimation but incompletely represent humidity and root zone dynamics. Supply–drainage feedback offers stronger closed-loop information, while temperature and VPD-based correction improves responsiveness to atmospheric demand. Tomato requires careful calcium and potassium management during reproductive stages, whereas paprika demands stable substrate moisture, EC, and drainage. A conceptual hierarchical framework is proposed in which solar radiation establishes the baseline nutrient-solution supply, radiation-rate information provides short-term adjustment, root-zone and drainage measurements provide feedback correction, and temperature or VPD serves as a supervisory layer. Ion-specific sensing, mechanistic models, and AI/ML approaches can further support nutrient-specific and predictive management. Few included studies evaluated these strategies under explicitly imposed high-temperature conditions; therefore crop, cultivar, and growth-stage-specific validation under commercial high-temperature greenhouse conditions is required before operational thresholds can be generalized.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212168

Authors: Qingyun Huang Dongju Pei Honghui Rao Lizhu Ye Yinglong Wang Quan Wei

Accurate detection of Camellia oleifera fruits in natural orchards is essential for automated harvesting and yield-related phenotyping but is challenged by small fruit size, dense distribution, foliage occlusion, and fruit–leaf similarity. To address these challenges, we developed CO-YOLO, an enhanced YOLOv11-based detector that integrates a spatial attention module (SAM) and coordinate attention (CA) to jointly enhance spatial discriminative feature extraction and positional encoding. Unlike approaches that employ attention mechanisms primarily to reweight features, CO-YOLO combines spatial attention with coordinate-aware feature representation to improve the identification and localization of partially occluded fruits while retaining the YOLOv11 detection framework. A field dataset of 674 raw RGB images was collected under different fruit developmental stages, weather conditions, illumination environments, and occlusion levels. Compared with YOLOv11, CO-YOLO improved precision, recall, mAP@0.50, mAP@0.75, mAP@0.50:0.95, and F1-score by 2.46, 3.17, 2.96, 3.64, 3.42, and 2.56 percentage points, respectively, with greater improvements under stringent localization criteria. Ablation experiments confirmed the complementary contributions of SAM and CA, while environmental evaluation showed that immature fruits, rainy conditions, and dense occlusion remained the main sources of performance degradation. Fruit-counting analysis further indicated improved consistency between automated and manual counts, although dense fruit clusters continued to introduce counting errors. Overall, CO-YOLO improves the detection of Camellia oleifera fruit under complex orchard conditions while preserving the efficiency of the YOLOv11 framework, and thus offers a practical visual perception approach for automated harvesting and yield-related phenotyping.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212167

Authors: Bangxin Ding Yongbo Tong Yu Shan Jiangrui Zhai Biao Cao Yungang Bai

Water scarcity increasingly restricts conventional annual winter irrigation in cotton production systems of southern Xinjiang, yet the consequences of reducing winter irrigation frequency for soil properties, microbial communities, and crop establishment remain unclear. A long-term field experiment was conducted in a drip-irrigated cotton field to compare annual winter irrigation (CK), continuous omission of winter irrigation (H1), winter irrigation with one intervening non-irrigated winter (H2; once every two years), and winter irrigation with two consecutive intervening non-irrigated winters (H3; once every three years). Soil water and salinity, nutrient contents, enzyme activities, microbial biomass and community characteristics, cotton emergence, and seed cotton yield were evaluated. Complete omission of winter irrigation resulted in the greatest salt accumulation and reduced soil moisture, whereas H2 and H3 maintained higher soil organic matter and total nutrient contents than CK. H3 also showed higher microbial biomass carbon and the greatest bacterial and fungal richness. RDA indicated that soil salinity, total potassium, microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen, and enzyme activities were significantly associated with microbial community composition. Winter irrigation frequency significantly affected cotton emergence but not seed cotton yield; H3 produced the highest emergence rate without a significant yield penalty. Overall, periodic winter irrigation, particularly the H3 regime, showed potential to reduce long-term winter irrigation frequency while maintaining favorable soil properties and cotton establishment. Multi-year measurements of yield and irrigation water use are required before this regime can be recommended for long-term management.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212166

Authors: Antonia Almeida da Silva Sonia Maria de Lima Salgado Lívia Pimenta Teixeira Jean Rafael Ávila de Lima Taís Teixeira das Neves Vania Aparecida Silva Leonor Guerra Guimarães Wilder Douglas Santiago Alexandre Rezende Teixeira Mário Lúcio Vilela de Resende

Meloidogyne paranaensis is widespread in Brazil’s main coffee-growing regions, reducing productivity and potentially causing plant death. Defective black-green-sour (BGS) coffee beans are an abundant source of bioactive compounds capable of activating plant defense mechanisms. This study evaluated the potential of aqueous BGS-bean extracts for their ability to induce physiological and biochemical defenses in susceptible Coffea arabica cv. ‘Catuaí Vermelho IAC 144’. Plants were inoculated with 5000 M. paranaensis eggs, and BGS-bean extracts diluted to different chlorogenic acid (CGA) concentrations (0.075, 0.150, 0.250, and 0.300 mg mL−1) were applied one day before inoculation, 45 days after, and 15 days before harvest. We assessed nematode population density, shoot biomass, bioactive compounds, foliar nutrients, antioxidant enzyme activities (Superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT)), lipid peroxidation (MDA), and photosynthetic pigments. BGS-bean extracts containing 0.25 and 0.30 mg mL−1 CGA increased root CGA content and preserved chlorophyll a and carotenoids under nematode challenge. Treatments reduced lipid peroxidation through enhanced CAT activity in roots and SOD activity in leaves, while increasing foliar concentrations of potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), nitrogen (N), and manganese (Mn). Shoot dry mass increased regardless of nematode presence. Overall, BGS bean extracts enhanced coffee tree growth and induced physiological, biochemical, and nutritional responses commonly associated with plant defense mechanisms in the presence of Meloidogyne paranaensis.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212165

Authors: Heng Zhang Xiaoming Fu Shengxue Zhao

Reliable segmentation of cherry tomato peduncles is difficult in greenhouse harvesting because peduncles are slender, occupy few pixels, resemble shoots and petioles, and are frequently occluded by clustered fruit. This study presents a peduncle-aware instance-segmentation and geometric-consistency framework for cluster-tomato harvesting perception. From the public 2022 Shanxi Agricultural Valley Tomato Town greenhouse cluster-tomato dataset, 1383 images with visible peduncles were selected and re-annotated in Labelme with polygon masks for fruit-cluster regions and peduncles. The framework combines boundary-weighted mask optimization, Coordinate Attention, and Soft-NMS. Evaluation on 208 held-out images showed a class-averaged mask AP50 of 0.9606 under the high-recall configuration; fruit-cluster and peduncle AP50 values were 0.9900 and 0.9313, respectively. At a score threshold of 0.50, overall precision, recall, F1 score, and instance-level Jaccard score were 0.8440, 0.9495, 0.8937, and 0.8078. In the 2D mask-geometric consistency evaluation, centroid-derived proxy points yielded matched-pair mean errors of 8.49 pixels for the peduncle and 5.94 pixels for the fruit-cluster region. These values quantify consistency between predicted-mask-derived and ground-truth-mask-derived points and do not represent physical robotic positioning accuracy.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212164

Authors: Antonia Terpou Nikolaos Afratis Gina Athanasiou Olga S. Arvaniti Theodore Zahariadis

Sensor-based environmental monitoring provides the real-time measurements required to support quality-oriented management in greenhouse tomato production. Although sensing does not directly alter fruit physiology, sensor-derived information can guide targeted interventions in temperature, light, relative humidity, irrigation, and nutrient management, thereby maintaining or imposing environmental conditions that influence fruit quality. This review examines the effects of these environmental conditions on tomato bioactive compounds and other quality traits and evaluates how sensor networks, AI-assisted analytics, decision-support tools, and automated control systems can support nutritional and functional quality-oriented greenhouse management. Particular emphasis is placed on functional quality traits, including lycopene and other carotenoids, phenolic compounds, vitamin C, and antioxidant capacity, alongside conventional physical and sensory attributes. The effects of key microclimate factors, including temperature, light intensity and spectral composition, relative humidity, and irrigation, are critically discussed, together with the role of sensing and control systems in maintaining conditions associated with desirable quality responses. The review also highlights advances in integrated sensing systems, data analytics, and decision-support tools that enable quality-oriented and functionality-driven greenhouse management. Remaining challenges, including variability in functional responses and limited integration of consumer-relevant health metrics, are identified. Overall, the integration of sensor-derived information with targeted management and control actions may facilitate greenhouse production strategies that explicitly prioritize nutritional, functional, physical, and sensory quality.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212163

Authors: Ewelina Krukow Halina Lipińska Mariusz Kulik Agnieszka Kępkowicz

Selenium biofortification of permanent grasslands represents a promising strategy for enhancing the nutritional quality of forage for livestock. This study evaluated the effectiveness of foliar selenium biofortification in multispecies grass–legume mixtures as affected by application rate, timing, and seed mixture. The study was conducted over three consecutive growing seasons (2023–2025), with a total of 648 aboveground herbage samples collected for analysis. Three multispecies mixtures were treated with four rates of a Se-containing formulation (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 L ha−1) applied at two different sward heights (10 and 15 cm). Selenium concentration was determined in the plant dry matter, and treatment effects were assessed using non-parametric statistical analyses. The application rate was the only factor that significantly affected Se concentration in the plant material. Se concentration increased progressively as the application rate increased. Mean Se concentrations were 0.035 mg kg−1 at 0.0 L ha−1, 0.077 mg kg−1 at 0.5 L ha−1, 0.086 mg kg−1 at 1.0 L ha−1, and 0.115 mg kg−1 at 1.5 L ha−1, corresponding to increases of 120.0%, 145.7%, and 228.6%, respectively, relative to the control. In contrast, neither the plant growth stage at application nor the species composition of the mixtures significantly affected Se accumulation (p > 0.05). The results demonstrate that foliar application of Se is an effective strategy for increasing Se concentration in multispecies grass–legume mixtures. Among the factors examined, the application rate showed the most pronounced effect on the effectiveness of Se biofortification, whereas no statistically significant effects were detected for application timing or seed mixture under the conditions of the present study. However, the lack of a statistically significant effect of seed mixture should not be interpreted as evidence that mixture composition is irrelevant to Se biofortification. Differences in species composition may influence Se uptake, translocation, assimilation, and accumulation through species-specific physiological responses and interactions among species within the sward. These aspects warrant further investigation, particularly through a detailed assessment of the actual species composition of the sward during the experimental period. Overall, the findings indicate that foliar Se biofortification may represent a flexible and practical approach for producing Se-enriched forage under diverse cultivation conditions.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212162

Authors: Penghua Gao Xianqin Qiu Dandan Gao Qixiang Wu Ying Qi Lifang Li Min Yang Yongteng Zhao Jianwei Guo Jianrong Zhao Feiyan Huang Lei Yu

Konjac (Amorphophallus muelleri) is widely cultivated in southwest China because of its high glucomannan content. Southern blight, caused by Athelia rolfsii (Ar), is one of the most devastating fungal diseases affecting konjac growth and development, for which no effective control methods are currently available. Therefore, this study aimed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying konjac–Ar interactions using dual RNA-seq and metabolomics. During the early stage of infection, hormone-related gene expression was altered and transcript levels of photosynthesis-associated genes were significantly reduced. At later stages, host responses were characterized by sustained activation of the phenylpropanoid biosynthetic pathway and a progressive decline in energy metabolism, consistent with a gradual loss of defense capacity as the infection advances. In the pathogen, Ar exhibited coordinated upregulation of carbohydrate metabolism pathways, including genes encoding glycoside hydrolase (GH) family proteins and other putative virulence-related genes, consistent with necrotrophic colonization and the exploitation of host carbohydrates. Notably, syringin, an infection-induced phenylpropanoid metabolite, inhibited Ar growth in vitro with an EC50 of 67–69 µM, indicating moderate antifungal activity. Collectively, these findings provide insights into the molecular and metabolic responses underlying the konjac–Ar interaction and establish a foundation for further investigation of konjac defense mechanisms.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212160

Authors: Binyan Zhao Wenyan Li Chengyu Zhu Xinpeng Wang Chunjiao Li Yuliang Gao Kuihua Li

Tuber initiation is the window through which climate pressure reaches potato yield. The tuberigen SELF-PRUNING 6A (StSP6A) is leaf-derived and phloem-mobile. Reviews of stress are organised by stress type, not by the step at which interruption occurs. Competing routes are unweighted, and findings of different kinds sit at one level of confidence. We read that literature along four sites of the leaf-to-stolon axis: tuberigen production, long-distance transport, stolon responsiveness, and sugar-flux execution. Claims are graded by evidence kind and inference scope, with model-derived inference and cross-species analogy held apart. We read interruption as distributed along the axis, not convergent on one node; the four are unequally established. The stress biology of transport rests almost entirely on inference. Stress can lower the gain with which a stolon reads an arriving signal without changing its amount, which resolves the abscisic acid paradox on evidence from one group. A stress effect’s sign can depend on dose and developmental window, so single-stress results do not extrapolate. Production carries most evidence but acts against a feedback loop; responsiveness offers a second route, but neither is field-tested for yield. Discriminating experiments are needed. Which cell stress acts on remains open: no spatial transcriptome of the hooked stolon exists.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212161

Authors: Fansen Yue Yiwen Zeng Shiguo Zhang Wenyi Yang Haoran Li Kun Li Yihong Song

Fruit quality is jointly influenced by preharvest growing conditions, harvest status, and postharvest storage environments, whereas existing approaches generally focus on individual stages and therefore remain limited in simultaneously supporting cross-stage quality prediction, economic value assessment, and practical operational decision-making. To address the requirements of smart orchard management and postharvest quality control, Pre2Post-EcoLLM is proposed as a unified framework integrating fruit and canopy RGB images, environmental and soil sensing data, postharvest temperature and relative humidity, carbon dioxide and oxygen (CO2/O2), volatile organic compound (VOC) measurements, management records, and economic information. First, the Growth-to-Harvest Multimodal Representation module constructs a Harvest Quality State through growth-stage-aware cross-modal interaction. Subsequently, the Cross-Stage Quality–Economic Co-Evolution module continuously injects the harvest state into the postharvest temporal evolution process to jointly predict soluble solids content (SSC), firmness, weight loss, decay risk, and remaining shelf life, while further estimating commercial grade, saleable rate, economic loss, and net return. Finally, the Evidence-Grounded Agricultural Large Language Model (LLM) QA module combines structured model evidence, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-retrieved agricultural knowledge, and outputs from the Economic Calculator to provide traceable natural-language explanations for storage and selling decisions. Experimental results demonstrate that Pre2Post-EcoLLM achieved an overall normalized mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.247, a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.394, a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 7.29%, and an R2 of 0.916 for harvest and postharvest quality prediction, with disaggregated MAEs of 0.42∘Brix for SSC, 0.38kg/cm2 for firmness, and 0.31% for weight loss rate, while the decay-risk F1-score and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) reached 0.907 and 0.954, respectively. The remaining shelf-life MAE was reduced to 1.68days, while the Economic MAE and Economic R2 reached 0.066(normalizedratio,equivalentto561CNY/ton) and 0.921, respectively. Storage–sale Decision Accuracy and Decision F1 reached 91.7% and 90.9%, respectively. For agricultural question answering, Answer Accuracy and Faithfulness reached 92.4% and 95.1%, respectively, while the Hallucination Rate was reduced to 4.9%. Ablation experiments further confirmed the effectiveness of growth-stage-aware fusion, cross-stage state injection, temporal quality evolution, economic coupling, and evidence-grounded question answering. These results indicate that the proposed framework can effectively connect preharvest sensing, postharvest quality evolution, and economic decision-making, providing a practical intelligent solution for lifecycle fruit quality assessment and smart storage management.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212159

Authors: Lin Shi Kang Shao Yafeng Wu Zhixin Li Hongjiu Liu Zhanlin Ji Xiang Ji

In agricultural disease images, lesions often exhibit large-scale variations, irregular shapes, gradual boundary transitions, and high texture similarity to surrounding backgrounds. These characteristics make models prone to insufficient lesion-body response, biased contextual discrimination, and unstable contour localization during segmentation. To address the fine-grained segmentation difficulties caused by imbalanced regional representation, semantic discrimination, and boundary constraints, this paper proposes DHB-DeepLabV3+, an agricultural disease image segmentation model. Based on lightweight feature extraction, the proposed model further organizes lesion segmentation beyond pixel-wise classification by jointly modeling lesion regions, contextual semantics, and boundary structures, thereby improving the completeness and boundary stability of disease regions in complex scenes. The proposed model was evaluated on three datasets, including a rice disease dataset, a leaf disease dataset, and the PlantSeg dataset. Across five independent runs, DHB-DeepLabV3+ achieved mean mIoU values of 88.45%, 82.52%, and 81.72% on the rice disease, leaf disease, and PlantSeg datasets, respectively, with corresponding standard deviations of 0.26, 0.35, and 0.38 percentage points. The lightweight version reduced the number of parameters to 6.67 M and the computational cost to 2.36 GFLOPs, and it was deployed on an RK3568 edge device for validation. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves stable segmentation performance and has potential for edge-device application in complex agricultural disease segmentation scenarios.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212157

Authors: Na Zhao Jie Chen Fukun Zhai Xingzong Zhang Jinguang Huang Hao Zhang Wanquan Chen Liang Huang Taiguo Liu

To elucidate the leaf rust resistance and distribution of Lr genes in major wheat-producing regions of China, 48 common wheat cultivars newly registered at the national level between 2020 and 2022 were phenotyped via multi-race field resistance assays and gene postulation. Parallel molecular marker genotyping was performed on the entire panel to detect the presence of nine documented Lr genes (Lr1, Lr9, Lr10, Lr19, Lr20, Lr24, Lr26, Lr28, and Lr34), and the resistance gene profiles of all accessions were further validated by integrating genotyping results with pedigree tracing analysis. The present study systematically characterizes this uniformly assembled panel of 48 recently registered national wheat cultivars, offering an updated, comprehensive overview of Lr gene distribution patterns in current Chinese commercial wheat breeding programs. The results indicated that nine formally catalogued Lr resistance genes were present in the tested wheat cultivars, predominantly occurring in diverse pyramidal combination patterns. The Lr1 and Lr26 exhibited the highest detection frequency across the entire cultivar panel. Furthermore, Lr10, Lr11, Lr14a, Lr15, Lr28, Lr33 and Lr39 genes were putatively identified in a small subset of the tested accessions. None of the cultivars carried Lr9, Lr19, Lr20, or Lr24. Seven cultivars were susceptible to all tested pathogen races. Two of the assessed wheat cultivars were confirmed to carry effective adult plant resistance, whereas an additional two cultivars were classified as carrying the characteristic slow rusting resistance phenotype.. Collectively, these results provide critical empirical evidence and actionable theoretical references for targeted regional cultivar deployment, durable leaf rust resistance breeding, and novel resistance gene discovery in Chinese wheat production systems.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212158

Authors: Changbing Pu Fang Feng Qiyu Lu Jiahua Liu Xiaoyu Dong Lijin Lin Jin Wang Xiulan Lv

To improve berry quality and reduce cadmium (Cd) accumulation in berries, ‘Summer Black’ grapevines were intercropped with the Cd hyperaccumulator Solanum nigrum in Cd-contaminated soil; the effects of this intercropping system on berry quality and Cd accumulation were investigated over a single season, and sampling was performed from the onset of berry coloration to ripening. Intercropping with S. nigrum increased single fruit weight as well as longitudinal and transverse diameters of berries, which were increased by 7.34%, 5.43%, and 6.25%, respectively, at maturity compared with monoculture. Intercropping with S. nigrum also increased total color difference, accelerated berry coloration, and enhanced the contents of total anthocyanins and other phenolic compounds in grape berries. Meanwhile, intercropping with S. nigrum increased the contents of soluble solids, total soluble sugars, and vitamin C, while reducing the titratable acidity and Cd. At maturity, intercropping with S. nigrum increased the contents of soluble solids and total soluble sugars by 7.88% and 3.60%, respectively, and reduced Cd content by 15.22% compared with monoculture. These preliminary results suggest that intercropping with S. nigrum can improve berry quality and reduce Cd accumulation in grapes grown in Cd-contaminated soil.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212156

Authors: Yueran Zhang Yongbin Wang Xiaojing Hu Junjie Liu Guanghua Wang

Distinct hydrological management under rice paddy field (RS) and corn upland field (CS) cultivation reshapes soil bacterial communities in agricultural ecosystems. Yet large-scale paired comparisons disentangling how these two land-use types jointly modulate bacterial biogeographic patterns, life-history strategies, and co-occurrence associations remain poorly documented for the typical Mollisol region of Northeast China. Using 30 pairs of geographically adjacent RS and CS soils, this study integrated high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing, qPCR quantification, and rrn copy number derived trait proxies alongside co-occurrence network analysis to compare bacterial community characteristics and nutrient-cycling-related signatures between the two habitats. RSs harbored higher bacterial α-diversity, total bacterial abundance, and niche width relative to CSs; while both land-use types exhibited significant distance–decay relationships, environmental filtering exerted stronger control over community turnover than geographic distance in both systems. RSs had significantly higher NH4+-N content, whereas CSs exhibited higher NO3−-N, total phosphorus (TP), total potassium (TK), and available potassium (AK) contents, together with a higher multi-nutrient-cycling index (MNC). In contrast to the r-strategist-biased trait signals observed in RSs, CSs was dominated by putative K-strategist oligotrophic taxa, and clear latitudinal gradients in community life-history traits were detectable in CSs yet largely obscured in RSs by redox fluctuations. Conversely, CSs exhibited more complex and cohesive bacterial co-occurrence networks with higher simulated robustness derived primarily from oligotrophic subgroups, and the sets of keystone taxa and their functional linkage to multi-nutrient cycling diverged sharply between RSs and CSs. These contrasting community, trait, and network signatures indicate that hydrological differences between paired paddy and upland soils drive divergent bacterial contributions to nutrient cycling, offering microbial-based references for land-use targeted soil management in Mollisol agroecosystems.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212155

Authors: Kai Liu Honghong Ma Shenghai Pu Xingwang Ma

Cotton production under drip irrigation is common in arid and semi-arid Northwest China. Drip line placement determines the location of fertilizer application; therefore, evaluating the appropriate drip line layout and N application rate is essential for maintaining yield and reducing N losses. A two-year field experiment (2024–2025) was conducted at a single site with three independent replicates per treatment in a randomized complete block design arranged as a 2 × 2 factorial: two drip line layouts (wide-row and narrow-row) crossed with two N rates (300 and 240 kg N ha−1; W300, W240, N300, and N240). Under the wide-row layout, root length density was higher (p < 0.05), and soil NO3−-N was mainly distributed in the 0–60 cm layer during one fertigation cycle and across the fertilization period, overlapping with the root distribution. W240 significantly reduced NO3−-N leaching and residual soil NO3−-N (p < 0.05) and increased root length density and nitrogen partial factor productivity (PFPN) (p < 0.05), without reducing boll biomass, total N uptake, or seed cotton yield (p > 0.05). Under the narrow-row layout, soil NO3−-N migrated rapidly downward and accumulated in the 60–100 cm layer; N240 reduced NO3−-N leaching and residual soil NO3−-N (p < 0.05) but also reduced cotton N uptake and seed cotton yield (p < 0.05), whereas N300 increased residual soil NO3−-N and leaching and reduced PFPN (p < 0.05). Overall, under the soil, climate, cultivar, and irrigation conditions of this two-year single-site experiment, the wide-row layout with 240 kg N ha−1 maintained seed cotton yield while reducing the measured NO3−-N leaching and residual soil NO3−-N.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212154

Authors: Xudong He Jianhao Gao Qiyan Zhou Haonan Tang Kai Bao Shanshan He Khansa Sami Yajie Liu Jin Yue Guowu Yu

Glutamate decarboxylase (GAD) catalyzes the formation of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and is a central enzyme of the plant GABA shunt. Six HvGAD genes were identified in the Morex V3 barley reference genome and characterized with respect to phylogeny, gene structure, conserved motifs, chromosomal distribution, and promoter cis-acting elements. Public transcriptome profiles were combined with reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) analyses under drought, salt, and cold stress to identify broadly responsive family members, and the relationship between HvGAD1 expression and leaf GABA content was examined. HvGAD1 was broadly expressed and responded to all three stresses. Pearson analysis showed positive associations between HvGAD1 expression and GABA content in the pooled data and under drought and cold stress, although the association was not significant after adjustment for treatment and sampling time. Recombinant HvGAD1 was used to raise a rabbit polyclonal antibody that detected and enriched HvGAD-immunoreactive proteins from barley tissues. Immunoprecipitation–mass spectrometry (IP-MS) analysis identified six co-enriched candidate proteins, including cytoplasmic aspartate aminotransferase, probable serine acetyltransferase 5, and an Annexin D7-like protein. These findings support HvGAD1 as a candidate for further functional analysis of GABA metabolism and abiotic stress responses in barley. The antibody and six co-enriched proteins provide resources for subsequent protein-level studies.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212153

Authors: Sohyeon Kang Junghwa Park Seokyung Park Minjoo Kim Jaehun Lee Yeon-Soo Kim Jaesung Park

Deep learning technologies have been increasingly applied to precision weed management, and You Only Look Once (YOLO) has become widely adopted owing to its real-time detection capability and high accuracy. This systematic review analyzes YOLO-based weed recognition models with emphasis on field challenges and architectural optimization strategies. A structured search of Web of Science and Scopus, supplemented by manual searching, was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Following screening and eligibility assessment, 45 studies were included in the systematic synthesis. The main categories of analysis included attention mechanisms that enhance discrimination among vegetation with similar shapes and colors, multi-scale feature-fusion architectures that integrate information across feature pyramid levels to improve the detection of weeds of varying sizes and viewpoints, and lightweight architectures designed to support real-time operation on resource-constrained hardware, along with other optimization strategies. Recent developments increasingly combine these approaches to address crop–weed similarity, occlusion, scale variation, and complex field backgrounds while improving computational efficiency. The review further examines how architectural enhancement strategies contribute to detection accuracy and computational efficiency and discusses their implications for practical applications such as selective spraying and robotic weeding. Overall, this review links major field-level weed-recognition challenges with corresponding architectural optimization strategies and provides a systematic framework for developing accurate and efficient YOLO-based weed recognition systems for site-specific weed management.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212152

Authors: Flavia Angela Maria Maggiolini Camilla Mandorino Alberto L’Abbate Antonio Domenico Marsico Carlo Bergamini Maria Scrascia Rocco Perniola Carlo Pazzani Maria Francesca Cardone

Intensive use of synthetic fungicides to control grapevine downy mildew raises interconnected concerns for human health, environmental safety, and food quality—a challenge that biological control agents (BCAs) are well positioned to address. Among bacterial BCAs, Bacillus velezensis shows strong biocontrol potential, but efficacy varies substantially among conspecific strains, complicating rational strain selection. Whole-genome comparative analysis of two strains with contrasting efficacy against Plasmopara viticola (BLG_B2 and BLG_B4) identified four HIGH-impact variants present exclusively in the ineffective strain BLG_B2, predicted to cause loss of function of glycerol kinase (glpK), the antimicrobial peptide resistance regulator yxdJ, a c-di-GMP phosphodiesterase, and the ribonuclease yeeF. In other Bacillus strains, three of these genes are linked to surfactin biosynthesis, antimicrobial peptide detoxification and the motility-to-biofilm transition; they are therefore proposed as candidate determinants of the biocontrol deficit of BLG_B2, whose causal role remains to be tested. These results show that whole-genome comparison of conspecific BCA strains can generate testable hypotheses on the genomic basis of differential biocontrol efficacy.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212151

Authors: Eugenia Guccione Vicente Serna-Escolano María José Giménez Pedro J. Zapata Alessio Allegra Giuseppe Sortino

‘Femminello Zagara Bianca’ is one of the most important lemon cultivars in Sicilian citriculture. This study evaluated how flowering period (early-season ‘Primofiore’ and late-season Verdello, obtained by forcing technique), rootstock genotype (Citrus volkameriana [VK] and Citrange Carrizo [CC]), and irrigation regime (full irrigation [FI] and summer forcing) affected fruit quality and antioxidant systems of ‘Femminello Zagara Bianca’ lemons. ‘Primofiore’ lemons achieved higher fruit weight, yellow colour, and antioxidant enzyme activities (ascorbate peroxidase, catalase, and peroxidase) than Verdello lemon fruit. The forcing technique enhanced total soluble solids, titratable acidity, individual sugars, organic acids, and flavedo flavonoids (hesperidin and eriocitrin). The rootstock genotype VK increased fruit weight, while CC combined with forcing showed the highest accumulation of chemical and bioactive compounds. Principal component analysis confirmed that the quality of lemon fruit was determined by the management of the flowering period and irrigation in a rootstock-dependent manner. Therefore, these findings provide growers with a strategy for utilising specific scion–rootstock–irrigation combinations to ensure high-value fruit throughout the harvest season.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212146

Authors: Joseph L. Pegler Jackson M. J. Oultram Shaun J. Curtin Christopher P. L. Grof Andrew L. Eamens

The journal retracts the article titled “Further Disruption of the TAS3 Pathway via the Addition of the AGO7 Mutation to the DRB1, DRB2 or DRB4 Mutations Severely Impairs the Reproductive Competence of Arabidopsis thaliana” [...]

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212149

Authors: Shuning Si Li Tian Min Yu Zhongxian Li Junzhe Qu Suming Ding Yongkui Jin Xinyu Xue

To address unclear particle ejection behavior and poor spreading uniformity in reciprocating sweeping spreaders for agricultural UAVs, this study analyzed particle motion and optimized the key structural parameters of the sweeping disc. The particle–vane contact process was first analyzed to determine the forces acting on the particles and the evolution of particle velocity during contact, thereby clarifying the effects of vane structural parameters on particle ejection. Single-factor simulations based on the discrete element method (DEM) were then conducted to identify the vane groups and structural parameters that strongly affected particle deposition. Results indicated that vane groups 1 and 2 significantly affected lateral deposition distribution. Their width, spacing, and tilt angle were therefore selected as six factors for the subsequent response surface optimization. To overcome the limitations of the CV in capturing local peak variations, three supplementary evaluation parameters were introduced: peak consistency (PC), relative peak intensity (IP), and central filling ratio (RC), with PC and IP set as multi-objective optimization targets. After parameter optimization, insufficient deposition remained in the central region of the single-layer disc. A dual-layer vane structure with coordinated inner and outer vanes was therefore developed to further improve the particle deposition distribution. Field tests were conducted using an XAG P150 Agricultural UAV. The relative errors between the measured and simulated values of PC, IP, and RC were 3.15%, 6.08%, and 8.51%, respectively, while the CV decreased from 29.75% to 19.02%. These results can support the structural optimization of reciprocating sweeping spreading devices for agricultural UAVs and the improvement of spreading uniformity.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212150

Authors: Huiling Fan Wenhai Jin Xiaoxing Peng Yujiao Liu Hongyan Zhang Zhanxia Deng Xin Yang Hao Wang Xuexia Wu

Saline–alkali stress significantly affects crop growth and yield, yet research on faba beans across vegetative and reproductive stages remains limited. We used a 124 mM mixed saline–alkali solution (pH 9.25) to test germination tolerance in 912 accessions, then grew 234 faba bean accessions with moderate saline–alkali tolerance at germination under substrate-based saline–alkali stress conditions (140 mM saline–alkali, pH 10.5) during the vegetative and reproductive stages. Under a 124 mM mixed saline–alkali solution, 912 faba bean accessions had an average germination rate (GR) of 49%. Stress significantly decreased the number of healthy seedlings (NHS); the average was only 33%. Accessions that performed relatively better under saline–alkali stress were the least common (18.31%), whereas those that performed relatively worse were the most common (39.58%). Faba bean accessions from China’s Shanxi Province (GR% and NHS% as high as 65.8% and 63.3%, respectively) and Africa showed better germination performance under saline–alkali stress. Autumn-sown accessions performed better than spring-sown accessions under saline–alkali stress (germination potential(GP), germination index (GI), GR and NHS: 44%, 3.22, 53% and 35% vs. 37%, 2.82, 47% and 31%, respectively). Accessions with red–purple and dark-green seed coats generally showed superior germination performance across most germination parameters. Accessions with wrinkled seed coats showed higher germination performance (the GP, GI, GR, and NHS were 47%, 3.08, 59%, and 35%) than those with smooth coats. Small-seeded accessions tended to perform slightly better under saline–alkali stress. Based on germination, seedling, and vegetative and reproductive stages assessments, H0001722 was identified as highly tolerant to saline–alkali stress, with 96.7% for each of GP, GR, and NHS, while Qingcan 19 was classified as extremely sensitive. H0001722’s MFV was twice that of Qingcan 19 through the vegetative and reproductive stages. This study provides valuable resources for identifying genes associated with saline–alkali tolerance and developing stress-resistant varieties.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212148

Authors: Adriana Celi-Soto Xavier Holguin-Salazar George Cedeño-García Cristhian Vega Ponce Luis Alberto Saltos-Rezabala Álvaro Monteros-Altamirano Marcelo Tacán Favio Ruilova Galo Cedeño Jorge Lange-Reyes

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is an important oilseed crop whose diversity provides opportunities to identify germplasm combining high yield, physiological performance, and desirable oil quality. This study evaluated the morphophysiological, productive, and biochemical diversity of ten peanut accessions under field capacity conditions. Traits included leaf area, root number, nodulation, gynophores, pods per plant, stomatal number and opening state, photosystem II photochemical activity, and fatty acid composition. Gynophore number was strongly related to pods per plant (R2 = 0.6688), while pod number explained 43.09% of yield variation (R2 = 0.4309). INIAP-ECU-11465 and INIAP-ECU-11832 achieved yields exceeding 4000 kg ha−1. Nodulation showed limited association with yield, whereas stomatal traits and photochemical performance revealed distinct physiological responses among accessions. Oleic acid predominated in the lipid profile (40.77–53.54%), indicating variability relevant to oil quality and oxidative stability. The agronomic, physiological, and biochemical diversity identified provides useful criteria for selecting promising peanut germplasm and supports further evaluation of these accessions in breeding strategies aimed at improving productivity and oil quality.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212147

Authors: Erastus Wasikoyo Csaba Juhász József Zsembeli

Soil moisture plays a critical role in soil organic carbon (SOC) storage and stabilisation and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions amid climatic variability and in different agroecosystems. However, the mechanisms that regulate organic matter decomposition, microbial activities, and root respiration with direct impacts on carbon (C) cycling remain incompletely synthesised. This review synthesises evidence showing how soil moisture regulates SOC stabilisation and CO2 fluxes, particulate organic C (POC) and mineral-associated organic C (MAOC) response and the role of rare microbes under drought. Findings from 87 peer-reviewed studies from Web of Science and Scopus between 2007 and 2026 confirm that soil moisture is a key regulator of C circulation. Additionally, moderate soil moisture of a 60–70% water-holding capacity (WHC) enhances SOC stocks and CO2 efflux peaks due to increased microbial activities and respiration. Extreme drying and rewetting cycles in rainfed soils trigger drastic CO2 emission pulses. However, under drought conditions, rare microbes can be utilised (for rhizosphere modification) to improve microbial biomass C (MBC), necromass C and MAOC formation, thereby enhancing sustainable agricultural production. This study confirms that CO2 efflux and SOC stabilisation primarily rely on soil moisture dynamics. Therefore, sustainable moisture conservation practices improve moisture retention and SOC stabilisation and reduce CO2 emissions, offering a viable pathway for mitigating the impacts of climate change footprints.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212145

Authors: Yingan Shao Madhavi Devaraj

Under complex field conditions, multi-class rice disease and pest-induced damage detection remains challenging. These challenges include substantial variations in target scale, densely distributed small targets, and blurred boundaries. To overcome these difficulties, this work presents a multi-class rice disease and pest-induced damage detection framework, SSW-YOLO. It is derived from YOLO11n to improve detection performance. First, SPDConv is incorporated into the backbone to preserve small-scale and densely distributed lesion features during conventional downsampling. C3k2-SAConv is used in the neck to adaptively adjust receptive fields to facilitate information exchange and fusion among multi-scale features. Finally, WIoU v3 is adopted instead of the original CIoU loss to achieve more stable bounding box regression for lesions with irregular morphology and blurred boundaries. WIoU v3 employs a dynamic non-monotonic focusing strategy that reduces the influence of poor-quality samples during optimization and improves localization performance. In a single-run evaluation, SSW-YOLO obtained 80.7% Precision, 70.1% Recall, and 77.2% mAP@0.5. Relative to YOLO11n, the corresponding gains were 3.7, 3.8 and 3.8 percentage points, respectively. In addition, SSW-YOLO has 4.18 M parameters and requires 10.4 GFLOPs. These results show that SSW-YOLO improves the performance of multi-class rice disease and pest-induced damage detection on the evaluated dataset and shows potential for accurate rice disease identification and intelligent monitoring.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212144

Authors: Yifan Wang Zhimin Xu

The extensive application of plastic films in agriculture has served as a cornerstone of modern agronomy, significantly enhancing crop yields, moisture conservation, and water use efficiency [...]

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212142

Authors: Tao Yu Hongshu Ruan Shuai Yu Jianguo Zhang Shiliang Cao Wenyue Li Gengbin Yang

Maize (Zea mays L.) is a globally important crop, but its sensitivity to cold stress leads to substantial yield losses in temperate zones, where low temperatures, particularly below 10 °C, critically constrain cultivation in high-altitude and high-latitude regions. Recent progress has identified key cold-tolerance genes, dissected natural variations, elucidated signaling pathways, and enabled multi-omics network construction. Some studies have provided evidence for the proposed coupling of ZmICE1 with amino acid metabolism and COR gene expression, the association of COOL1 promoter variation with HY5 binding and high-latitude adaptation, and the involvement of HSF21 in lipid homeostasis without an apparent yield penalty. Several novel genes (ZmWAK3, ZmMAPK4, TIP4;3, ZmDUF966-10) have been identified as promising candidates, expanding the genetic reservoir for further validation. Mechanistically, an unconventional ZmBSK4-ZmMAPK4 cascade, calcium-MAPK crosstalk, histone modifications, and small RNA-mediated regulation have been implicated in cold responses, although the extent to which each mechanism has been experimentally validated varies. Integrative approaches (chromatin accessibility, WGCNA, multi-omics) have revealed hierarchical synergies among transcription factors, epigenetics, hormones, and metabolism. Favorable alleles (COOL1HapA, HSF21Hap1, and the TIP4;3 beneficial haplotype) represent potential targets for molecular design, while CRISPR/Cas9 offers opportunities to accelerate gene editing and pyramiding. This review synthesizes these advances, and offers a comprehensive framework for cold-tolerance breeding in maize.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212141

Authors: Zicheng Wang Jingwen Jiang Zhixiang Xing Xu Yan Dingyu Jiang Yuhang Bai Panpan Zhou Xiujie Yin Yan Sun

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is a widely cultivated perennial forage legume, yet its productivity is severely constrained by soil salinization. Calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs) play critical roles in plant salt-stress signaling; however, systematic characterization of the CDPK gene family in alfalfa and functional validation of its members remain limited. In this study, we performed genome-wide identification and functional characterization of the CDPK gene family across three alfalfa germplasms. We identified 18, 90, and 26 MsCDPK members in M. sativa ‘Zhongmu No. 1’, M. sativa ‘Zhongmu No. 4’, and M. sativa subsp. caerulea, respectively, which were classified into four subfamilies based on phylogenetic analysis. Collinearity analysis revealed that segmental duplication was the primary driver of MsCDPK gene family expansion, whereas tandem duplication was not detected. Notably, expression pattern analysis identified MsCDPK9.Zm1 as a salt-responsive gene. Overexpression of MsCDPK9.Zm1 in alfalfa significantly enhanced physiological salt tolerance, as evidenced by increased antioxidant enzyme activities and reduced oxidative damage under salt stress. Luciferase complementation imaging assays further supported the physical association between MsCDPK9.Zm1 and RBOHB. These findings further our understanding of the CDPK gene family in alfalfa and identify MsCDPK9.Zm1 as a candidate gene for molecular breeding of salt-tolerant alfalfa.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212143

Authors: Lijuan Feng Chuanzeng Wang Caiyong Jiang Qiqing Jiao Junxue Yang Jing Zhang Yongshuai Li Huaping Sun Zhenkai Zhang Yanlei Yin

Fruit peel color is a key quality trait of pomegranate that influences consumer preference and market value. However, the pigmentation patterns and underlying molecular mechanisms in red- and green-skinned cultivars remain incompletely understood. This study aimed to elucidate the transcriptional basis of peel color variation between the red-skinned cultivar ‘Taishanhong’ (TSH) and the green-skinned cultivar ‘Linqing1’ (LQ1). Pigment contents were determined in fruit peels at three developmental stages, and RNA-seq was performed to identify key genes regulating peel coloration. The results show that anthocyanin content increased progressively during fruit development in both cultivars, whereas chlorophyll and carotenoid contents declined gradually. TSH accumulated significantly more anthocyanins but contained markedly lower levels of chlorophyll and carotenoids than LQ1. The S1_vs_S3 comparison yielded the largest number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in both cultivars, which were enriched in phenylalanine metabolism, flavonoid biosynthesis, photosynthesis, and carotenoid biosynthesis pathways. Twenty-four DEGs related to anthocyanin metabolism were identified, among which chalcone isomerase (PgCHI4), Flavonol synthase (PgFLS1), and UDP-glucose: flavonoid 3-O-glucosyltransferase (PgUFGT1) were strongly correlated with anthocyanin accumulation. Twenty-eight DEGs associated with carotenoid metabolism were detected; geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate synthase (PgGGPS1, PgGGPS2) and zeaxanthin epoxidase (PgZEP1) were closely linked to carotenoid biosynthesis, whereas carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase (PgCCD2) and 9-cis-epoxycarotenoid dioxygenase 2 (PgNCED2) were associated with carotenoid degradation. Chlorophyll metabolism was potentially regulated by multiple genes, including fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase (PgFBA1), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphatedehydrogenase (PgGAPDH1, PgGAPDH4). Furthermore, 78 transcription factors from the MYB (myeloblastosis), ERF (ethylene response factor), bHLH (basic helix-loop-helix), NAC (NAM, ATAF1/2 and CUC2), ARF (auxin response factor) families were identified as candidate regulators of pigment metabolism. Collectively, this study delineates a cultivar-specific transcriptional program underlying peel color differentiation in pomegranate and identifies candidate structural genes and transcription factors that can serve as targets for functional validation and marker-assisted breeding of fruit color traits.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212140

Authors: Alberto San Bautista

Mineral nutrition is evaluated through nutrient supply, deficiency, tissue concentration, and yield response. These indicators help establish sufficiency but do not fully describe the metabolic costs or spatial and temporal constraints involved in correcting a nutrient-dependent limitation. This hypothesis-driven narrative review examines acquisition, assimilation, homeostasis, and respiration alongside photochemical energy conversion, ATP-dependent metabolism, carbon allocation, and crop productivity. It distinguishes basal fertilization from corrective functional mineral nutrition, which targets limitations arising from stress or disrupted acquisition and transport despite apparently adequate background supply. Three provisional, potentially overlapping profiles organize documented mechanisms and proposed energy–carbon connections: Group I (Ca, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, and P), Group II (Cl, Cu, N, S, and Zn), and Group III (B, Mo, and Ni). Their boundaries remain unvalidated and imply no fertilizer priority. Nitrogen is assigned provisionally to Group II because crop responses to additional N vary with nutritional status and sink demand. Correcting N limitation can substantially improve photosynthesis and harvested yield; beyond sufficiency, additional N may increase the costs of assimilation, protein turnover, and maintenance with limited productive benefit. The review distinguishes evidence for functional recovery, harvested yield, and measured energetic efficiency. Current evidence does not permit quantitative comparison of net energetic efficiency across all fourteen nutrients. Mineral correction and biostimulation may complement one another when they address different components of an active limitation.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212139

Authors: Antonio Marcos Loureiro da Silva Gabriela Madureira Barroso Grazielly Gomes de Oliveira Caique Menezes de Abreu Otávio Augusto Dassoler Sayane Zanchet José Barbosa dos Santos Leandro Galon

The integrated assessment of the emerging weed community and the soil seed bank is essential for understanding the persistence and reinfestation potential of weeds in agricultural systems. This study aimed to evaluate the phytosociological structure and the germinable seed bank under no-tillage, conventional tillage and fallow systems, associated with chemical desiccation with glyphosate and mechanical mowing at pre-sowing, over four agricultural seasons (2017/2018 to 2020/2021) in Erechim, RS, Brazil. Phytosociology was assessed using the random quadrat method, and the seed bank was evaluated through seedling emergence from soil samples collected from the 0–10 and 10–20 cm layers. A total of 23,913 individuals were recorded in the phytosociological survey, with predominance of Lolium multiflorum (61.9%) and Sida rhombifolia (21.5%). In the seed bank, 5812 seedlings emerged, of which 56.7% occurred in the 0–10 cm layer. Desiccation reduced the emergence of L. multiflorum by 34.7% in the surface layer compared with mowing. The similarity index between phytosociology and the seed bank was 0.35, showing that the community observed in the field does not fully represent the reinfestation potential stored in the soil.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212138

Authors: Jianyi Zhu Shengnan Liu Xiaogang Zhou Pei Pang Jing Huang Haoyu Zhao

Single-copy genes are important components of plant genomes, but their evolutionary origins and biological functions in polyploid crops remain poorly understood. The objective of this study was to clarify the evolutionary origins of single-copy genes in allotetraploid Brassica napus and identify nutrient-responsive single-copy genes involved in root development. Here, we systematically identified single-copy genes across 16 representative plant species and investigated their evolution and potential functions in allotetraploid Brassica napus. A total of 167,219 single-copy genes were identified across the 16 species, including 5106 genes in the B. napus cultivar Zhongshuang 11 (ZS11). Comparative synteny analysis with B. rapa and B. oleracea classified 204 chromosome-anchored genes with unambiguous parental relationships into 38 inherited and 166 inferred loss-derived single-copy genes, indicating that post-polyploid duplicate loss is an important route for the re-establishment of single-copy states in B. napus. Integration of promoter and expression analyses identified 65 root- and nutrient-responsive candidates. Among them, BnaA09G0594900ZS, designated BnaNRA1, was induced by low-nitrogen and low-phosphorus treatments and encoded a predominantly nuclear-localized protein. Three independent bnanra1-edited lines showed no consistent root phenotype under nutrient-sufficient conditions but exhibited reduced lateral root formation under nitrogen and phosphorus deficiency, with a particularly consistent effect under phosphorus deficiency. Collectively, these findings indicate that post-polyploid duplicate loss contributes to the re-establishment of single-copy states in B. napus and identify BnaNRA1 as a nutrient-responsive single-copy gene contributing to lateral root development under nutrient limitation.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212137

Authors: Yiqiao Ma Jianhua Dong Yanzhi Cui Ying Lv Qifeng Jiang Ke Tan Lei Gong Yue Sun Jian Zhang

Breeding of cucumber for protected cultivation requires improvement of multiple complex horticultural traits, but studies combining multi-trait association mapping with genomic prediction in the same breeding panel remain limited. We evaluated 208 cucumber inbred lines independently developed from diverse source materials collected across China. Sixteen agronomic traits covering vegetative growth, reproductive development, fruit characteristics, yield, and disease resistance were measured over two consecutive growing seasons, and whole-genome resequencing uncovered 580,151 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Genome-wide association analysis detected 89 significantly associated loci (SALs) for 15 traits, including 10 genomic regions shared by two or more traits. Beyond the known CsFT and Tu/CsDULL loci, numerous additional SALs were identified, yielding 19 candidate genes for further investigation of the corresponding traits in cucumber. Genomic prediction accuracies using rrBLUP were evaluated for nine quantitative traits and were variable among traits, with fruit length, fruit shape index, and fruit neck length showing relatively high prediction accuracies. Together, these results have furthered our understanding of the genetic architecture and genomic predictability of cucumber agronomic traits and laid a foundation for integrating locus-specific and genome-wide information for future breeding strategies.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212136

Authors: Chang’an Zhou Wenke Wang Yifeng Liu Shanxing Zhao Shuming Zhang Xiumin Guan Laichen Zheng Chenxiao Wang Jing Zhang Xiaoying Ning Keyan Peng Jiutao Yang Yuan Yao Lanping Luo Xin Liu

Soybean–maize strip intercropping is a representative sustainable cereal–legume production system, but dense canopy closure, interspecific leaf occlusion, and heterogeneous field backgrounds hinder timely and accurate disease scouting. Rapid identification and localization of multiple foliar diseases are critical for supporting field inspection and preliminary targeted management. To address the challenges of small lesions, variable lesion scales, and complex field backgrounds, this study proposes FDTNet, an improved object detection model based on YOLOv11n. We introduce the FasterNet backbone for optimized feature extraction, and construct a Feature Diffusion Pyramid Network (FDPN) combined with a Dimension-Aware Selective Integration (DASI) module as the joint fusion block. A Task-Aware Decoupled Detection Head (TADDH) is further designed to enhance disease classification and bounding box localization. The model was evaluated on a dataset of 2196 images containing 10,574 annotated instances across nine soybean and maize foliar diseases. On the test set with image-level random split, FDTNet achieved a precision of 94.4%, a recall of 92.6%, an mAP@0.5 of 95.2%, and an mAP@[0.5:0.95] of 69.5%, which is 5.2 percentage points higher in mAP@0.5 than the baseline YOLOv11n. The AP@0.5 values for the nine categories ranged from 87.1% to 99.6%, showing favorable performance for most disease types. This study demonstrates that FDTNet can serve as a preliminary visual screening tool for multi-disease identification and symptomatic region localization. The model does not provide outputs for disease severity, treatment thresholds, pesticide selection or application timing; its performance under plot-level splits, cross-region evaluation and different imaging devices still needs further verification.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212135

Authors: William Mlelwa Gilad Ben Israel Nevet Zur Biton Haggai Wasserstrom Yael Levy David J. Bertioli Soraya C. M. Leal-Bertioli Mounirou H. Alyr Peggy Ozias-Akins Srinivas Kunta Ran Hovav

Stem rot, caused by Agroathelia rolfsii (syn. Sclerotium rolfsii), is a major soilborne disease of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.). We evaluated wild-derived germplasm for field resistance and identified associated genomic regions. Twenty-eight genotypes, including Israeli cultivars, three wild-derived induced allotetraploids and their backcross derivatives, were evaluated under artificial field inoculation over two seasons. Disease level differed significantly among genotypes, with consistent rankings between seasons (r = 0.88). The induced allotetraploids and several derived lines showed significantly low disease levels, whereas most commercial cultivars developed severe disease. Stem rot reduced pod yield by 49% on average, and disease level was negatively correlated with yield (r = −0.63). Near-isogenic line-based analysis indicated that bunch-type architecture may reduce disease development. NIFA-R, derived from ValSten1 (A. valida × A. stenosperma), combined low disease levels with relatively high yield under inoculated and non-inoculated conditions. QTL mapping in a Hanoch × NIFA-R F2:3 population detected 18 significant trait–QTL associations for sickness grade, symptomatic plants and inoculation-center sickness grade, with a consistently supported shared association on chromosome 13. NIFA-R contributed the favorable allele at 16 of 18 significant QTL associations, although their specific ancestry remains unresolved. These results demonstrate the value of wild-derived resistance resources and identify preliminary QTL regions for further validation toward marker-assisted selection.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212134

Authors: Bowen Mao Pingan Jiang Yongke Li Lei Wang Yunjie Zhao En Yu

Precision weeding in cotton fields requires joint plant detection and growth-point localization despite canopy overlap and limited embedded computing resources. We propose ADQ-PACR, a one-stage framework that combines quality-aware localization with auxiliary coordinate regularization. ADQ jointly predicts growth-point coordinates, keypoint validity, and scale-normalized localization quality. PACR maintains independent supervision of the primary candidate and supervises the auxiliary candidate with the lowest coordinate error. The auxiliary branches are removed before deployment, leaving a fixed primary path. Experiments used 3527 smartphone images collected in Shaya and Changji, Xinjiang, from April to July 2022, spanning cotton seedling to squaring stages and including weeds such as Amaranthus retroflexus, Chenopodium album, and Portulaca oleracea. Evaluation used 343 fixed test images and three training seeds, with a common evaluator for adapted YOLO pose baselines initialized from detection weights and two-stage systems using predicted boxes. The full ADQ-PACR framework increased mean keypoint mAP50–95 over the corresponding YOLOv8n, YOLO11n, and YOLO26n baselines by 3.29, 2.56, and 2.17 percentage points, respectively. The YOLO11n implementation achieved box mAP50–95 of 60.68 ± 0.11% and keypoint mAP50–95 of 43.50 ± 1.55%. TensorRT FP16 deployment on Jetson AGX Orin in MAXN mode yielded end-to-end latencies of 20.85–22.22 ms across the three backbones.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212132

Authors: Mengmeng Sun Tao Wang Wenna Jiang Zhenlei Li Zijie Fan Xuejun Huang Ruirui Du Pingyuan Liu Xibin Zhang Wenchao Zhen Yandong Wang

Groundwater overexploited areas of the North China Plain (NCP) have long faced the challenge of balancing agricultural water use and food security. Although seasonal fallowing can reduce water consumption, it also leads to underutilization of land and climatic resources, environmental risks such as wind erosion and dust dispersal, and losses in grain production. Integrating cover crops with multiple-cropping systems offers an important approach to improving soil ecological functioning and resource-use efficiency while ensuring food security. In this study, a field experiment was conducted with two one harvest per year systems, in which fallow (FM) or winter rapeseed (RM) was followed by spring maize, and two three harvests over two years systems, in which fallow (FMWM) or winter rapeseed (RMWM) was followed by spring maize and then by winter wheat and summer maize in the following year. We evaluated the effects of winter rapeseed cover and cropping-system adjustment on soil water dynamics, soil multifunctionality, grain yield, and crop water productivity. Winter rapeseed increased water consumption during the fallow period by 12.6–36.2 mm compared with the corresponding fallow treatments. However, abundant rainfall during the subsequent maize season compensated for the soil water deficit caused by winter rapeseed cover. On average, water consumption of spring maize was 86.6 mm higher than that of summer maize. Consequently, the higher water consumption of spring maize and the compensating effects of abundant rainfall offset the extra water use by winter rapeseed, resulting in no significant differences in two-year cumulative water consumption among treatments. Winter rapeseed increased soil available nutrient contents and enzyme activities. Soil alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen, available potassium, and available phosphorus contents, as well as sucrase, urease, alkaline phosphatase, and catalase activities, were significantly higher under winter rapeseed cover than under the corresponding fallow treatments. Consequently, the soil multifunctionality index was also generally higher under winter rapeseed cover. In addition, RMWM achieved the highest grain yield, with two-year cumulative grain yield increasing by 56.1%, 47.6%, and 8.9% relative to FM, RM, and FMWM, respectively. Crop water productivity under RMWM reached 1.7 kg m−3, representing increases of 56.4%, 47.8%, and 9.4%, respectively. Overall, the system combining winter rapeseed cover with three harvests over two years improved soil functioning and increased grain yield and crop water productivity without significantly increasing two-year cumulative water consumption, providing a feasible cropping-system option for optimizing agricultural water use and safeguarding food security in groundwater-depleted regions of the North China Plain.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212133

Authors: Wenzhe Liu Yan Liu Shishun Zhang Taotao Yang Weicheng Xu Longmei Wu Xiaozhe Bao Qingchun Chen Bin Zhang

Direct-seeded rice offers advantages in labor efficiency and mechanized production, but differences between early- and late-season growing conditions may influence genotype performance and trait selection priorities in double-cropping systems. In this study, 32 rice genotypes were evaluated under direct-seeded and manually transplanted conditions during the early and late growing seasons of 2021 in South China. Grain yield, relative yield retention (RYR; direct-seeded yield/manual-transplanted yield), and agronomic trait variation were analyzed to characterize seasonal performance and develop a multi-trait direct-seeding suitability index (DSI). Mean grain yield under direct seeding was lower than that under manual transplanting in both seasons, with RYR averaging 0.614 and 0.671 in the early and late seasons, respectively. Direct-seeded grain yield showed moderate cross-season consistency (Pearson’s r = 0.605; Spearman’s ρ = 0.572), indicating that genotypes with higher productivity in one season generally performed relatively well in the other. Individual agronomic traits showed varying seasonal responses, although their associations with grain yield and RYR were generally modest and did not remain significant after false-discovery-rate correction. Integrated trait prioritization identified contrasting seasonal patterns: lodging-related traits and chalkiness-related traits received relatively high priority in the early season, whereas seed-setting rate and several grain-quality traits were more prominent in the late season. The DSI combined standardized direct-seeded grain yield with a multi-trait index to assess overall genotype performance. DSI rankings were strongly associated with grain-yield rankings (ρ = 0.91), while the multi-trait index provided complementary information. The DSI showed high internal stability across sensitivity analyses, and a reduced model based on five priority traits produced rankings closely aligned with the full model (ρ = 0.984). These findings highlight the value of combining grain productivity with season-specific trait priorities for evaluating direct-seeded rice genotypes.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212131

Authors: Le Wang Zaihua Liu Ci Hu Chengcheng Ni Yizheng Wu Tao Liu Adnan Anwar Khan Zhijun Zhang Qing Wang

Cadmium (Cd) pollution of paddy soils poses a serious threat to food safety and human health. Calcium- and magnesium-aluminum layered double hydroxides (CaAl-/MgAl-LDHs) have recently been deployed to remediate Cd-contaminated soils; nevertheless, the responses of soil properties and microbial communities to CaAl-/MgAl-LDHs are not well elucidated. Herein, a field trial was implemented to evaluate the impacts of CaAl-/MgAl-LDHs and conventional amendments (lime (LM) and biochar (BC)) on soil Cd availability and bacterial community structure, together with the consequent impacts on rice grain Cd enrichment. Compared with CK without amendments, CaAl-LDHs, MgAl-LDHs, LM, and BC amendments significantly raised rice yield-related agronomic traits, with the greatest yield increment observed in the CaAl-LDHs treatment. The four amendments enhanced soil pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC) and available phosphorus (AP), while reducing DTPA-extractable Cd concentration. Notably, CaAl-LDHs and MgAl-LDHs treatments outperformed LM and BC in suppressing DTPA-extractable Cd at rice-grain filling and maturity stages. The four amendments substantially decreased rice Cd concentration, with the lowest values observed in CaAl-LDHs and MgAl-LDHs treatments. Furthermore, the four amendments boosted bacterial α-diversity and reconstructed bacterial community structure by elevating the phyla Thermodesulfobacteriota, Bacteroidota, and Firmicutes. Based on redundancy and Pearson correlation analyses, soil pH, CEC, available Cd, ExCa, and AP were identified as critical factors governing bacterial community structure. Partial least squares path model suggested that soil amendments modified pH and CEC, which influenced bacterial communities and available soil Cd, thereby suppressing rice Cd accumulation. These findings suggest that bacterial communities and soil chemical properties play critical roles in Cd immobilization upon amendment addition, and support the application potential of CaAl-/MgAl-LDHs to achieve safe rice production in Cd-polluted soils.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212130

Authors: Yingjun Li Jingying Hei Yanhua Zhu Rui Rui Xiaoli Wan Longfeng Yu Biao Wang Xiahong He Shu Wang Jiansong Peng

Long-term continuous cropping of Panax notoginseng (Sanqi) in the understory agroforestry systems of southwest China disrupts soil biogeochemical cycles and triggers microbial nutrient limitation. Nonetheless, it remains unclear how rotation with compatible medicinal plants regulates soil ecoenzymatic stoichiometry and enzyme-inferred microbial nutrient limitation in Pinus armandii understories. Here, pure P. armandii stands (Pa), Sanqi continuous cropping (SS), and Sanqi–Polygonatum kingianum rotation (SP) systems were established as three treatments in a subtropical plateau mountain region. We analyzed edaphic properties, extracellular enzyme activities, and bacterial and fungal gene abundance. The results showed that both SS and SP markedly reduced soil extracellular enzyme activities relative to the Pa control. Vector analysis indicated universal phosphorus limitation across all treatments (vector angle > 45°), with no significant difference in phosphorus limitation intensity between SS and SP. Notably, SS increased vector length and thus aggravated enzyme-inferred microbial carbon limitation, while SP effectively alleviated such carbon constraint. Seasonal variation exerted a stronger influence on soil ecoenzymatic traits and microbial nutrient limitation than planting systems. Redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that total potassium soil organic carbon and the fungi-to-bacteria ratio were the key factors governing soil enzyme profiles in the SP system. Besides bacterial and fungal abundance, the F:B ratio, soil physical properties, soil chemical properties in the SP system also directly drove vector length. Collectively, based on one-year monitoring, SP rotation modified soil ecoenzymatic stoichiometry and reduced enzyme-inferred microbial carbon limitation in the P. armandii understory. These findings provide empirical evidence for optimizing medicinal plant agroforestry management in P. armandii forests.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212129

Authors: Mesut Çoşlu

Agricultural parcel geometry represents an important but relatively underexplored component of spatial heterogeneity in precision agriculture. This study investigated the spatial organization of 375 lavender parcels in Burdur Province, Türkiye, and their associations with topographic and land-resource characteristics. Parcel area, Shape Index (SI), and Compactness Index (CI) were evaluated together with elevation, slope, curvature, major soil groups (MSGs), and land capability classes (LCCs) using spatial and statistical analyses. A 2500 m fixed-distance threshold identified by Incremental Spatial Autocorrelation was used for Global Moran’s I, Local Moran’s I, and Getis–Ord Gi* analyses. All geometric and topographic variables exhibited significant positive spatial autocorrelation, with substantially stronger spatial dependence for elevation (Moran’s I = 0.805) and slope (I = 0.489). Area hotspots occurred at significantly higher elevations and on steeper slopes than non-hotspot parcels, with the strongest effect for slope (r = 0.389). Area hotspots were also strongly associated with MSG (Cramer’s V = 0.528) and moderately associated with LCC (V = 0.346), whereas SI and CI showed weaker relationships. These findings demonstrate that parcel geometry represents a complementary dimension of agricultural spatial heterogeneity and can support the prioritization of areas for detailed field assessment, providing a spatial basis for future site-specific monitoring rather than directly defining agronomically validated management zones.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212128

Authors: Yongqi Wang Kaixin Yang Zhikang Wang Junfen Yan Jisong Yang Bo Guan Buli Cui Xuehong Wang Yunzhao Li Guangyu Chi

Soil salinization severely threatens global agricultural productivity. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and straw incorporation are promising biological amendments for salt-affected soils, but their interactive effects on crop growth and soil biological processes remain poorly understood. In this study, a sterilized-soil pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the individual and interactive effects of a native AMF strain (Claroideoglomus sp., AM5) inoculation and straw incorporation (SI) on maize performance traits, soil properties, and bacterial communities in saline soil. Four treatments were established, including control (CK), AM5, SI, and AM5 + SI. The combined treatment exerted significant synergistic effects. AM5 successfully colonized maize roots with a 72% mycorrhizal infection rate (MIR) and 106% mycorrhizal dependence, and SI further enhanced colonization (80% MIR, 127% MD). Compared with CK, AM5 + SI increased aboveground fresh and dry weights by 61.5% and 48.7%, and Chlorophyll a and net photosynthetic rate by 35.4% and 147.3%, respectively. Soil physicochemical and biological conditions were improved, as evidenced by reduced topsoil and subsoil electrical conductivity (55.2% and 40.6%, respectively), increased nutrient availability (e.g., available phosphorus and potassium contents), and enhanced soil hydrolase activities (sucrase, urease, and alkaline phosphatase), particularly in subsoil. The combined treatment also restructured the soil bacterial community in both layers, increasing microbial diversity and selectively enriching beneficial phyla (e.g., Pseudomonadota, Actinomycetota), whose abundances were closely correlated with improvements in soil properties. These results confirm our hypothesis that the co-application of native AM5 and straw incorporation exerts synergistic effects on soil biological functions, leading to enhanced maize growth and soil fertility in saline soil. Random forest and PLS-SEM revealed that these soil-microbe changes were accompanied by greater maize biomass accumulation, photosynthetic capacity, and antioxidant defense, with distinct regulatory pathways between topsoil and subsoil. These findings indicate that co-application of native AMF and straw incorporation may effectively improve soil biological functions and maize performance in coastal saline soil, providing mechanistic insights for biological remediation using native AMF and organic residues.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212127

Authors: Tummy A. Mashakeni Ndivhuho Mutshekwa Tyson T. Mokgalabone Ashwell R. Ndhlala

Climate change and water scarcity pose threats to smallholder chilli pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) production, necessitating affordable and resource-efficient cultivation systems. This study assessed the effects of an Organic Medium-Enclosed Trough (OMET) system on the growth, yield, irrigation demand, nutritional, and UHPLC-QTOF-MS metabolite composition of chilli pepper under a randomised complete block design (n = 36) in a greenhouse. OMET significantly (p ≤ 0.05) increased plant height by 224%, stem diameter by approximately 43.7%, root length (57%), branch number (120%), fruit number per plant (133%), fruit length (70%), fruit width (48%), and fruit weight (204%). Cumulative irrigation water use was 44% lower under OMET (2400 mL) than under non-OMET (5350 mL). OMET increased protein (to 33.8% in leaves) and carbohydrate (to 45.4% in pods). OMET enhanced macronutrients Ca, K, and S and several micronutrients in leaves and pods. Sixteen amino acids were quantified, most of which were upregulated under OMET, with aspartic acid (Asp) being the most abundant. UHPLC-QTOF-MS untargeted metabolomics detected 38 metabolites, predominantly flavonoids and diterpenoid glycosides. Collectively, OMET improved chilli pepper growth, yield, nutrient density, and water-use efficiency without additional chemical fertiliser application, while nutrient cycling was achieved through the return of plant residues, offering smallholder farmers a practical, climate-resilient production option.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212126

Authors: Leônidas Canuto dos Santos Gabryel Silva Martins Pedro Antônio Namorato Benevenute Jucelino de Sousa Lima Fernanda Ribeiro dos Santos Indira Pereira de Oliveira Fábio Aurélio Dias Martins Josinaldo Lopes Araújo Rocha Luiz Roberto Guimarães Guilherme Guilherme Lopes

Water deficit at flowering is a major constraint to rice production. Foliar selenium (Se) application is an agronomic biofortification strategy that can enhance plant tolerance to abiotic stress while enriching grains with Se, yet its nutritional benefit depends on how much Se remains bioaccessible after cooking. This study evaluated the effects of foliar Se application (0, 1, 2, 3, and 5 mg pot−1) on rice under two irrigation regimes (well-watered and water deficit imposed during flowering). Water deficit did not reduce grain yield at any Se rate, and at 2 mg pot−1, grain yield under water deficit was ~11% higher than under well-watered conditions. Foliar Se application altered SOD, POD, and APX activities, whereas CAT was affected only by the irrigation regime, and MDA concentrations were reduced at Se rates of 2 and 5 mg pot−1. Selenium concentrations in leaves and grains increased with foliar application rates. Selenium application also influenced the concentrations of K, P, Ca, Mg, S, Cu, Fe, Mn, and Zn in grains. However, in vitro digestion revealed that cooked intact brown rice grains showed lower elemental bioaccessibility than uncooked rice flour (e.g., Se bioaccessibility decreased from 68.47% in flour to 45.82% in cooked grains, and S decreased by up to 99%), reflecting the combined effects of cooking and grain matrix integrity. Foliar Se application effectively enriched rice grains with Se and reduced lipid peroxidation, but post-cooking evaluations are essential to determine actual mineral bioaccessibility.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212125

Authors: Noemi Mamani Condori Nils Leander Huamán-Castilla Stefani Brilly Arevalo Navarro Kassio Ferreira Mendes Salomón Rey Ramos Rivera Yoselin Mamani Ramos Elvis Jack Colque Ayma Clara Nely Campos Quiróz Franz Zirena Vilca

Pharmaceutical contamination of irrigation water is an increasing concern for food safety, especially in hydroponic systems where dissolved contaminants remain highly bioavailable. This study evaluated low-dose ciprofloxacin (CIP; 0, 1, 5, and 10 µg L−1) effects on fresh shoot biomass, total phenolic content, in vitro antioxidant capacity (ORAC and DPPH), and CIP residues in edible tissue of hydroponically grown lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.). Shoot biomass increased by 13%, 20%, and 30% with increasing CIP, without visible phytotoxicity, while total phenolic content and ORAC increased by up to 97% and 12.4%, respectively, and DPPH IC50 decreased by 38–44%. In contrast, apparent CIP residues in shoot tissue tended to be lower at 5 and 10 µg L−1 than at 1 µg L−1; given these values were below the method limit of quantification (LOQ), this pattern is reported only as an indicative trend, and possible explanations such as uptake saturation and/or detoxification remain hypotheses that were not tested here. These results suggest that low-dose CIP exposure can be associated with higher biomass and phenolic/antioxidant indicators without evidence of a proportional rise in quantifiable residues, offering preliminary insight for food safety assessment in antibiotic-contaminated hydroponic systems. As this remains a preliminary assessment based mainly on biomass, total phenolics, in vitro antioxidant capacity, and CIP residues, further physiological and molecular analyses are needed to confirm the underlying mechanisms, together with longer-term validation under real production conditions.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212124

Authors: Saisai Liu Xiangyang Ma Shihao Liu Jianchao Li Shuhao Zhang Tingli Hao Tongyu Hou

Ill-timed harvest-aid spraying can reduce cotton yield and fiber quality. However, determining optimal spraying times is challenging when air temperature fluctuates strongly. Here, we analyzed whether cultivar type and planting pattern alleviate the adverse effects of improper spraying time. We conducted a three-factor field experiment in Xinjiang, China, during 2024–2025 with two cotton cultivars, three planting patterns (H76, H66, and L76), and three spraying times (T1, T2, and T3), plus an untreated control, then compared the defoliation rate (DR), boll opening rate (BOR), yield, and fiber quality among groups. We also determined the net contributions of harvest aids to DR and BOR by subtracting the natural (control) values (NDR and NBOR, respectively). Spraying time significantly affected DR, BOR, yield, and fiber quality. DR and BOR were highest at T2; lower values at T1 and T3 were attributed to physiological immaturity and lower temperatures, respectively. Yield losses and reductions in fiber length and strength of upper-canopy bolls increased with earlier spraying. Across the T1–T2 and T2–T3 intervals, the mean seed cotton yield loss decreased from 15.18% to 8.15%, and its average daily rate of change decreased from 0.95% to 0.36%. In contrast, the mean fiber length loss decreased from 8.44% to 3.81%, whereas its average daily rate of change increased from 0.36% to 0.53%. The moderating effects of cultivar on DR, BOR, and yield losses were susceptible to external environmental factors. Conversely, planting pattern had no significant effect on fiber length and fiber strength losses but had significant independent main effects on DR, BOR, and yield losses by altering NDR and NBOR: NDR and NBOR generally decreased in the order L76 > H66 > H76, whereas yield losses increased in the order L76 < H66 < H76. Therefore, when optimal spraying time is difficult to determine, we recommend reducing plant density or optimizing row configuration, rather than changing cultivar, to improve the efficacy of harvest aids.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212123

Authors: Andreea D. Ona Leon Muntean Ainong Shi

Developing varieties that combine high productivity, desirable quality, and resistance to diseases and environmental stresses remains a central goal of plant breeding [...]

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212122

Authors: Zhiheng Zheng Xiyue Wang Junyao Lin Shuzhen Song Jiahai Wu Yongkuan Chi

The influence of forest tending management measures on soil N turnover has attracted significantly more concern in recent decades. Nevertheless, uncertainties remain surrounding the effects and mechanisms of different tending management measures on soil nitrogen mineralization. In the process of forest management, thinning and fertilization are two common tending measures that are of great significance to the process of the forest nitrogen cycle. This study was conducted in a typical subtropical Chinese fir plantation, where we established a two-factor experimental design involving thinning intensity (light, moderate and heavy thinning) and fertilization treatment (fertilized and unfertilized). The objective was to evaluate the effects of these treatments on soil nitrogen mineralization rates. The results show that the fertilization treatment significantly increased soil ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen content, microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen, and net nitrogen mineralization rate by stimulating enzyme activity through exogenous nutrient input (p < 0.05). Additionally, light thinning and moderate thinning significantly promoted nitrogen mineralization, while heavy thinning showed an inhibitory effect. A reasonable forest management model can effectively improve the forest structure and soil microenvironment, increasing the soil nitrogen mineralization rate and nitrogen availability. In summary, systematically elucidating the synergistic regulatory effects and underlying mechanisms of different thinning intensities and fertilization treatments on nitrogen mineralization is crucial for gaining deeper insights into forest nitrogen cycling processes and the restoration of ecological functions.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212120

Authors: Chang Liu Lingling Li Aixia Xu Zhuzhu Luo Junhong Xie

Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration is vital for sustaining soil health, maintaining agricultural productivity, and combating land degradation in drylands. In these fragile regions, water scarcity, calcareous chemistry, and soil erosion create distinct challenges that traditional climate–substrate–disturbance frameworks fail to fully capture. Although numerous reviews have examined conservation management, they typically evaluate physical, biochemical, and microbial mechanisms in isolation, leaving their cross-regulations largely unresolved. To bridge this gap, we propose a coupled framework that merges physical aggregate protection with biochemical nutrient limitation. By linking ecoenzymatic stoichiometry to the soil aggregate hierarchy, our approach tracks metabolic signals alongside micro-structural changes. Drawing on evidence from the Loess Plateau and comparable semi-arid environments, we suggest that conservation practices stabilize SOC mainly by preserving pre-existing protected carbon rather than by forming new protective structures. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that this physical protection capacity is finite and texture-dependent, and, in the studies reviewed, physical and biochemical indicators together explain a large share of the variation in carbon mineralization. This framework offers an explanation for why four core agronomic practices (no-till duration, straw return rates, subsoiling frequency, and crop rotation combination) often show diminishing or context-dependent returns rather than linear increases, with diminishing responses consistent with capacity saturation. Finally, given the current scarcity of empirical data on tillage-driven nutrient limitations across aggregate fractions, we outline how integrating microbial–mineral carbon pump theory with long-term experimental networks could extend this framework for optimizing dryland agriculture.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212121

Authors: Jiali Wei Lang Wang Kaikai Jiang Haixia Long Tingyu Zhao Haiyang Gong Zhiqiang Wang Jian Hu Hongyang Sun Chen Yang Wei Zhang Qingping Zhou Dongdong Duan

Hummock–hollow microtopography is associated with fine-scale variation in vegetation and soil properties in alpine peatlands. In this study, we compared plant diversity, aboveground biomass of functional groups, and soil properties between hummocks and hollows in five paired plots in an alpine sedge peatland on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. Total aboveground biomass averaged 286.38 g m−2 in hollows and 228.32 g m−2 on hummocks. Hollows had greater sedge and grass biomass, whereas hummocks had greater forb biomass and higher plant diversity. Soil water content, total carbon, total nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, and ammonium nitrogen were higher in hollows, whereas soil pH was higher in hummocks. Soil C:N and C:P ratios were lower in hummocks, whereas Olsen-P and N:P did not differ significantly between microforms. Pooled associations of functional-group biomass with plant diversity and soil properties largely paralleled these microform contrasts. These findings indicate that total aboveground biomass alone does not fully characterize vegetation differences between microforms and suggest that microtopographic variation should be considered when assessing vegetation and soil conditions in alpine peatlands.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212119

Authors: Tingyan Zhou Zihan Li Caiyun Sun Chang Liu Xiangui Lin Junli Hu

As natural bioenhancers of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis, mycorrhiza helper (MH) bacteria have been proposed to develop sustainable agriculture. However, the inoculation effects of MH bacteria in intercropping systems remain poorly understood. Here, a greenhouse pot experiment was conducted to reveal the performance and role of an indigenous AM fungal community in a black soil under maize–soybean intercropping in response to the inoculation of two MH strains, Kitasatospora herbaricolor 2023A-1 (KHe) and K. indigofera 2023A-2 (KIn). Both strains shifted the most dominant AM fungal genus from Paraglomus to Glomus and promoted the occurrence of previously undetected genera Diversispora and/or Gigaspora. Nevertheless, only KIn significantly increased AM fungal diversity indices, whereas both strains increased AM fungal abundance and soil available P supply capability. Within the intercrops, maize exhibited higher mycorrhizal colonization and stronger responses in shoot biomass and P and K acquisition than the neighboring soybean. Moreover, compared with any single strain, the KHe + KIn produced greater increases in soil actinomycetes population, AM fungal abundance and colonization, soil alkaline phosphatase activity and available P concentration, nutrient acquisition and plant growth, particularly with maize. These findings provide new insights into the potential usage of MH bacteria in intercropping systems in black soils.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212117

Authors: Omar Llanes Cárdenas Mariano Norzagaray Campos Lorenzo Cervantes Arce Norma Patricia Muñoz Sevilla Luz Arcelia García Serrano Jeován Alberto Ávila Díaz Román Edén Parra Galaviz

The goal of this study is to model the rate of change between the dry season and wet season in groundwater quality for irrigation in coastal wells in the municipality of Guasave, Sinaloa, Mexico. In 58 well-water samples (29 sampled in the dry season and 29 in the wet season), the following parameters were measured: pH, electrical conductivity (E.C.), total dissolved solids, temperature, salinity, static water level, Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+, K+, Cl−, SO42−, CO32−, and HCO3−. The original sodium adsorption ratio (SARor), corrected SARco, and adjusted SARad were calculated. Using Pearson (Pr) and Spearman coefficients, ordinary and repeated measures correlations were calculated for the dry season and the wet season. To identify differences between seasons, paired tests and Piper diagrams were used. Values of quality measures were modeled using multiple linear regressions (partial least squares). For the quality change rate, three predictive models were obtained. These three models presented the following Pearson coefficient values: 0.311 (E.C. vs. SARor), 0.266 (E.C. vs. SARco), and 0.318 (E.C. vs. SARad). Observed and predicted quality were numerically classified based on the E.C. vs. SARor, SARco, and SARad. Although the models did not register efficient validations, this methodology can serve as a basis for applying more powerful non-linear predictive methods in future research. The methodology can be applied to prevent soil contamination caused by irrigation with saline and sodic water, potentially boosting agricultural yields in the agricultural heart of Mexico.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212118

Authors: Alnura Tursunova Akerke Zhamalbekova Shyryn Turbekova Aizhan Sardar Alua Rysbekova Rekhangul Islamova Bakhytzhan Duisembekov Nadira Sultanova Xiongbing Tu Alibek Uspanov

Bacterial soft rot of potato is predominantly associated with members of the genera Pectobacterium and Dickeya, whereas the contribution of other bacterial taxa to the etiology of the disease remains insufficiently characterized. This study aimed to characterize a bacterial isolate recovered from potato tubers exhibiting naturally occurring soft rot symptoms in Kazakhstan and to evaluate its pathogenic potential. Twelve bacterial isolates were obtained from symptomatic tissue, of which only isolate ZA4 reproducibly caused pronounced tissue softening and maceration following wound inoculation of healthy tubers, whereas disease development remained minimal in the negative control. Reproduction of characteristic symptoms and subsequent reisolation of the bacterium from experimentally affected tissue fulfilled the principal criteria of Koch’s postulates. Multilocus phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA, gyrB, rpoB, and pyrE sequences assigned isolate ZA4 to Bacillus altitudinis. When tested across five potato cultivars and one commercial sample of unknown cultivar identity, the proportion of macerated tissue ranged from approximately 60–85% at 24 h and varied among the tested materials, increasing to 95–98% at 48 h, indicating rapid progression of tissue maceration under the bioassay conditions. ZA4 also exhibited pectinolytic, cellulolytic, proteolytic, and amylolytic activities. These findings demonstrate that B. altitudinis ZA4 is capable of inducing pronounced tissue maceration and soft-rot symptoms in wounded potato tubers under artificial wound inoculation conditions. However, broader studies encompassing a larger number of samples and a wider geographic area are required to determine the occurrence and epidemiological significance of B. altitudinis in association with potato soft rot in Kazakhstan.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212116

Authors: Peng Han Zhongpeng Liu Yingmei Guo Yuanyuan Wu Xingyu Liu Jinhua Chen Ling Ou Hubiao Yang

Air plant (Tillandsia spp.) is a unique epiphytic genus, and its diverse leaf colors constitute one of its main ornamental values. Anthocyanins are known to be major pigments contributing to leaf coloration in air plants, but the molecular mechanisms regulating their accumulation during leaf color change remain unclear. In this study, leaves at three different growth periods were selected, and transcriptome sequencing combined with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to quantify anthocyanins. Our results showed that soluble sugars, proteins, and the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase (POD) significantly increased, while total chlorophyll content decreased during three periods. Furthermore, transcriptome sequencing analysis identified 1782 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) shared by both comparisons (CL0 vs. CL1 and CL0 vs. CL2). Within the flavonoid and anthocyanin biosynthesis pathways, key genes such as F3H, F3′H, F3′5′H, DFR, ANS, arGST, UGT, UFGT and HCT were notably upregulated. Among the 102 transcription factors that exhibited significant differences, the expression patterns of eight MYB genes related to anthocyanin differ across the CL0, CL1, and CL2 stages. Among them, three MYB genes showed increased expression in CL1 and CL2 compared with CL0, whereas five other MYB genes showed the highest expression in CL0. Additionally, a total of 55 metabolites were detected, including nine anthocyanins whose changes in accumulation were associated with the leaf color transition. By integrating transcriptomic and targeted metabolomic approaches, this study identified the transcriptional and metabolic changes related to leaf coloration and conveyed candidate genes and MYB transcription potentially involved in anthocyanins in air plant. These findings provide candidate genes and a theoretical foundation for further understanding the mechanisms of anthocyanin accumulation in air plants and for future functional studies.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212115

Authors: Xinyu Pan Delan Zhu Wenze Yu Ze Liu Rui Zhang Tingning Zhang

To identify an irrigation and nitrogen management strategy balancing winter wheat yield, resource-use efficiency, and economic return under center-pivot fertigation, a two-season field experiment was conducted in Yangling, Shaanxi Province. Four stage-specific irrigation regimes (30, 60, 90, and 120 mm) and four nitrogen rates (0, 150, 225, and 300 kg N ha−1) were evaluated. The 90 mm irrigation regime combined with 225 kg N ha−1 achieved the highest two-season mean grain yield, apparent water use efficiency calculated from the 0–60 cm soil water balance, and net return, reaching 8200.06 kg ha−1, 23.28 kg ha−1 mm−1, and 7593.76 CNY ha−1, respectively. The highest partial factor productivity of applied nitrogen (47.21 kg kg−1) occurred with 90 mm irrigation and 150 kg N ha−1. Increasing nitrogen from 225 to 300 kg N ha−1 under 90 mm irrigation reduced mean grain yield and net return by 603.55 kg ha−1 and 1998.00 CNY ha−1, respectively. Overall, 90 mm stage-specific irrigation combined with 225 kg N ha−1 was a promising strategy among the tested combinations. Response surface analysis indicated a predicted net-return optimum at approximately 209 kg N ha−1 under the fixed 90 mm irrigation regime.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212114

Authors: Entong Li Yaolong Wang Hanyin Bi Chenyu Zhu Zhanyuan Gao Cheng Jiang Ying Li Tongkun Liu Xilin Hou

Chloroplast-genome variation below the species level remains insufficiently characterized in Brassica, because most previous studies have relied on only one or a few representative plastomes. To determine whether dense within-subspecies sampling could reveal localized variation obscured by broader comparisons, we sequenced and assembled complete chloroplast genomes from 10 morphologically diverse varieties of Non-heading Chinese cabbage (NHCC; Brassica campestris [syn. Brassica rapa] ssp. chinensis) and placed their codon-usage patterns in the context of 15 Brassica plastomes. The NHCC plastomes were highly conserved in genome size (153,480–153,533 bp), GC content (36.36–36.39%), gene content, gene order, and quadripartite structure. Nevertheless, locus-level comparisons showed that the limited sequence variation was concentrated in a small number of regions. Six protein-coding loci and four intergenic spacers exhibited relatively elevated nucleotide diversity, and explicit counts of variable sites and internal indel blocks further characterized the sequence differences underlying these values. These loci represent candidate regions for population-level validation and potential molecular-marker development rather than confirmed variety-specific markers. In the broader comparison, mean ENC varied only from 45.15 to 45.49 among the 15 plastomes, indicating a highly conserved codon-usage background characterized by a general preference for A/U-ending synonymous codons. Eight codons—ACU, AGA, CAA, CUA, GCU, GGU, GUA, and UGU—were consistently recovered as putative optimal codons, although statistical support for ACU and GGU was restricted to a subset of accessions. PR2 analysis revealed imbalances within complementary nucleotide pairs rather than an overall preference for G/C-ending codons. Thus, the principal contribution of this study is the fine-scale localization of plastome variation through dense sampling within NHCC, providing candidate regions for subsequent diversity assessment and marker validation in independently sampled individuals.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212113

Authors: Yangyang Zhang Juan Qi Jinlong Chai Jiangshan Nie Changqing Wang Qianli Zhu Dong Li

Astragalus membranaceus is an important medicinal crop whose commercial production is frequently constrained by severe weed infestation. However, limited information is available regarding herbicide programs that simultaneously achieve effective weed control and maintain root safety, the primary determinant of total root fresh weight and quality. In this study, three-year field experiments (2022–2024) were conducted to evaluate the weed control efficacy, crop safety, root growth, yield, and major bioactive constituents of different post-emergence herbicide programs. Linear mixed-model analysis showed significant treatment effects on weed control efficacy, underground injury, root growth, and total root fresh weight (p < 0.001), whereas no significant year × treatment interaction was detected for the evaluated response variables under the conditions of this three-year field experiment (p > 0.05). The combination of bentazone 48% AS (2.700–3.000 L·ha−1) and quizalofop-P-ethyl 15% EC (0.375 L·ha−1) achieved >90% total weed control, caused no detectable underground injury, and increased total root fresh weight by 21.04–30.03% relative to the untreated control. In contrast, chloransulam-methyl combined with quizalofop-P-ethyl caused severe underground phytotoxicity, with root injury indices ranging from 63.10 to 80.01, which were associated with substantial reductions in total root fresh weight. Correlation and regression analyses further demonstrated that underground injury was significantly associated with root yield, whereas visible aboveground injury showed little relationship with yield performance. Furthermore, astragaloside IV and calycosin-7-O-β-D-glucoside contents did not differ significantly among CK1, T8, and T9. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating underground phytotoxicity into herbicide safety evaluation and provide a basis for developing effective post-emergence weed management strategies for A. membranaceus. Because all three growing seasons were evaluated at a single experimental site, the applicability of these findings to other environments, soil conditions, and A. membranaceus cultivars requires further validation.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212112

Authors: Arnab Majumder Md Nasim Reza Ka Young Lee Md Mamunur Rashid Yong Il Mun Dae-Hyun Lee Sun-Ok Chung

Precision seed metering has evolved from mechanically optimized devices to sensor-based, digitally connected systems. However, research remains fragmented across metering mechanisms, sensing, data processing, communication, and control. This review examined monitoring and closed-loop control throughout the seed-delivery process, from pickup and release to tube passage, furrow placement, and crop emergence. This structured review synthesized 49 primary studies identified through Scopus and the Web of Science Core Collection, with supplementary searching using Google Scholar and literature coverage through 1 September 2026. Optical and photoelectric sensors provide the most direct evidence for seed-passage detection, whereas encoders, pressure, vacuum, motor-current, and vibration measurements primarily indicate machine or actuator conditions. Machine vision provides spatial information and can support independent reference measurements, but requires suitable imaging conditions and computational resources. Capacitive, acoustic, impact-based, and hybrid approaches remain less extensively validated. Reported performance cannot be directly compared across studies due to differences in seed characteristics, mechanisms, operating speeds, event definitions, disturbances, and reference methods. Most studies demonstrate monitoring, alarms, or open-loop optimization rather than complete sensor-to-actuator correction. An engineering framework is therefore proposed to connect measurement targets, evidence maturity, latency, actuator authority, and independent verification. Future research should prioritize standardized testing, disturbance robustness, synchronized multi-row field validation, and measured end-to-end delay. Transparent reporting of correction accuracy, stability, cost, power demand, and interoperability is also required to support deployment and defensible assessment of closed-loop seeding systems.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212111

Authors: Junhao Li Zhongping Li Neng Hu Shitong Qiu Yong Su Zhiyu Zhang Lihong Chen Ying Wang

To investigate the effects of dryland tailwater recharge on rice rhizosphere fungi and phosphorus concentrations in the Erhai Lake Basin, two-year field experiments were conducted in Gusheng Village on the western shore of Erhai Lake in 2024 and 2025. Four water management treatments were established: conventional flooding (CK), controlled irrigation (C), lowwaterlayer tailwater recharge (CDC-L), and highwaterlayer tailwater recharge (CDC-H). High-throughput sequencing and the molybdenumantimony colorimetric method were used to analyze the dynamics of rhizosphere fungal communities and reveal the coupled responses among phosphorus fractions in surface water, shallow soil water (0–20 cm), and rhizosphere fungi. The results showed the following: (1) Compared with CK, the phosphorus activation coefficient (AC) in surface water under CDC-L and CDC-H decreased by 35.1% and 33.6%, respectively, in 2024, and by 4.5% and 18.4%, respectively, in 2025. The proportion of particulate phosphorus (PP%) increased by 67.5% and 66.1%, respectively, in 2024, and by 5.1% and 21.2%, respectively, in 2025. The ratio of dissolved phosphate (DP) to PP decreased by 77.3% and 79.2%, respectively, in 2024, and by 37.6% and 49.8%, respectively, in 2025. (2) Water management significantly reshaped the rhizosphere fungal community structure, with regulatory effects showing significant stage specificity. Tailwater recharge increased fungal OTU richness at the tillering stage. In 2024, richness at the tillering stage was 23.8% and 14.3% higher than that at the heading and milk stages, respectively; in 2025, the corresponding increases were 14.2% and 5.9%, respectively. (3) Controlled irrigation and tailwater recharge enriched Basidiomycota, which reduced surface water DP through biological immobilization and the promotion of particulate phosphorus sedimentation. Tailwater recharge also induced the enrichment of Mortierellomycota, which increased total phosphorus (TP) and DP in soil water by activating insoluble phosphorus. Although exogenous phosphorus input at the tillering stage caused a TP peak, wetdry alternation effectively inhibited the transformation of phosphorus into dissolved forms. In conclusion, the CDC-H treatment enabled the resource recovery of dryland tailwater while mitigating agricultural non-point-source phosphorus pollution. These synergistic outcomes demonstrate that CDC-H is more than a technical fix; it is a coupled waterfoodnvironment solution. This approach offers an optimized management model for water conservation and pollution reduction in the Erhai Lake Basin and similar regions. This study elucidates the mechanisms underlying phosphorus migration and transformation in tailwater-recharged paddies from the perspective of rhizosphere fungi, providing theoretical support and a practical paradigm for the green development of agriculture in plateau lake basins.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212110

Authors: Yanan Zhao Qiulin Li Yefu Zhou Xiaokang Hu Tao Wang

Nitrogen fertilization and planting density are key regulators of wheat population growth and yield; however, few studies have examined their combined effects on multi-trait resource trade-offs via the plant economics spectrum. Two single-season split-plot field experiments were conducted in the 2024–2025 cropping year using the winter wheat cultivar Womai106 and the spring wheat cultivar Jinchun6 under three nitrogen rates and five density gradients. Owing to their divergent sowing and harvesting phenology, the two cultivars were tested in separate growing seasons. We quantified biomass, yield components, photosynthetic and canopy traits at anthesis, and leaf C:N:P stoichiometry, and applied redundancy analysis, the log response ratio, and PCA to elucidate nitrogen and density regulation of wheat growth, nutrient allocation, and plant economics spectrum strategies. Nitrogen dominated wheat growth, leaf nutrition, and yield potential, whereas density modified canopy structure and population-level biomass and yield components in both cultivars, as well as photosynthetic rate in Jinchun6. Nitrogen × density interactions were significant for only one of the traits assessed (leaf area index in Womai106) and were not significant for any other trait. Grain yield followed a unimodal quadratic trend along the density gradients, although the quadratic term was significant at all nitrogen levels in Womai106 but only under N2 in Jinchun6, and the fitted optima had widely overlapping confidence intervals among nitrogen levels. Grain number per unit area, rather than thousand-kernel weight, determined final yield. Leaf stoichiometry was primarily regulated by nitrogen and showed strong homeostasis under crowding, with leaf [P] and leaf [C]:[P] in Womai106 being the exception. Plant economics spectrum scores shifted along the density gradient in both cultivar × season combinations, and the direction of this shift differed among nitrogen levels; in Jinchun6, acquisitive trait values were associated with high density only under high nitrogen. These findings provide a basis for ecotype-specific nitrogen and planting density management, and warrant confirmation across years, sites and additional genotypes.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212109

Authors: Gurjoban Singh Tiwana Golmar Golmohammadi Shivendra Kumar Vivek Sharma Saba Shaghaghi Namrata Ghimire Armaanjot Singh Kourosh Mohammadi

Nitrogen (N) management in silage corn on sandy soils requires balancing biomass production with nitrate loss. This study evaluated biomass yield, crop N removal, soil, leaf, and pore water N responses to seven N rates (0–470.8 kg N ha−1) at Ona, Florida, in 2025. A randomized complete block design included four replications and 28 plots. Biomass and harvest whole-plant N were measured separately by plot; soil and leaf samples were pooled across four blocks, and pore water from two blocks was pooled by treatment before analysis. Soil nitrate-N (NO3−-N) concentrations were generally greatest at 0–30 cm. Seasonal mean pore water NO3−-N increased from 1.7 mg N L−1 in the control to 46.0 mg N L−1 at the highest N rate. The highest observed mean dry biomass yield was 19.5 Mg ha−1 at 392.4 kg N ha−1, while upper rate means showed limited additional response. Apparent crop N recovery was approximately 71% at 235.4 kg N ha−1 and 36–38% at the two highest rates. Estimated NO3−-N leaching was 9–222 kg N ha−1 using 519 mm of measured drainage; an illustrative ±50% drainage scenario gave 111–333 kg N ha−1 at the highest rate. These descriptive findings indicate increasing nitrate exposure at high N rates under this wet season’s conditions, but do not establish an economic optimum or a transferable N rate threshold.

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy16212108

Authors: Jae-Hyun Park Seung-Hwan Park Ja-Min Park Han-Gil Kim Yong-Han Yoon Jin-Hee Ju

This study investigated the effects of companion cropping on substrate macronutrient content and on plant growth when perilla (Perilla frutescens L.) was grown as the main crop and kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) as the companion plant. Five treatments were established according to planting ratio: perilla monoculture (PC); perilla and kidney bean mixtures at 2:1 (P2K1), 1:1 (P1K1), and 1:2 (P1K2); and kidney bean monoculture (KC), all grown in containers under greenhouse conditions. Companion planting with kidney bean improved neither substrate macronutrient status nor the growth of perilla in containers. Substrate analysis showed that macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) declined significantly and rapidly in the mixed treatments relative to the perilla monoculture (p < 0.05). Compared with the monoculture, companion cropping with kidney bean significantly reduced the leaf length, leaf width, leaf number, chlorophyll content, chlorophyll fluorescence, stem diameter, and biomass of perilla (p < 0.05). The land equivalent ratio (LER) did not differ significantly among the P2K1, P1K1, and P1K2 treatments, although the relative yield (RY) and competitive ratio (CR) of kidney bean decreased with decreasing perilla cropping ratio, indicating that kidney bean was more competitive than perilla. Perilla monoculture is therefore more suitable than companion planting with kidney bean for short-duration container vegetable gardening.