Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition for Sustainable Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

Modern agriculture must respond to a growing world population. It must also face important challenges: producing, quantitatively and qualitatively, to feed the world’s population and preserving our soil heritage. This is to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, intensive agricultural practices have had a lasting effect on soil health (microbial life, mineral and organic composition, structure, physico-chemical properties, etc.). The emergence of new agricultural practices, fertilisation methods, sources of amendments and plant nutrition, and use of bacteria and fungi to improve the efficiency of nutrient use by crops are interesting and sustainable solutions to maintain soil life, improve its fertility, and feed plants for sufficient and high-quality agricultural production to promote sustainable agriculture. The valorisation of new and/or old sources of fertilisers and soil improvers is directly (direct input to the soil) or indirectly (physico-chemical transformation) useful in order to avoid pollution and environmental impacts. Consumers around the world are, nowadays, sensitive and attentive to the quality of agricultural products, their impact on the environment, and their health and that of the environment. It is therefore important to consider soil preservation and the naturalness of agricultural production in the context of new sources of nutrients and new technologies for plant fertilisation and improved soil fertility.

This collection invites contributions on new agricultural practices that maintain and/or restore soil life and fertility, new methods and technologies for mineral and organic feeding, plant fertilisation, new sources of and processes for providing healthy food without negative impact on the soil, the use of cultivars that efficiently valorise soil resources, and the use of plant cover and/or crop associations. Contributions concerning biocontrol and soilborne disease are also welcome.

Dr. Othmane Merah
Dr. Purushothaman Chirakkuzhyil Abhilash
Prof. Dr. Magdi T. Abdelhamid
Prof. Dr. Hailin Zhang
Dr. Bachar Zebib
Topic Editors