Prospects of Microbial Engineering Technology in Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

We are excited to announce the Special Issue “Prospects of Microbial Engineering Technology in Agriculture” in the journal AgriEngineering and kindly invite you to contribute.

Microbial engineering technology has the potential to revolutionize agriculture by utilizing the benefits of microbes for enhancing plant growth and soil health and mitigating the negative impacts of climate change. The long-term goal of developing microbial engineering technology in agroecosystems is to improve soil fertility and structure for higher crop yields, while decreasing the use of synthetic fertilizers, and to enhance interactions between soil microbiomes and crops for better disease resistance and minimum pesticide use. There is an increasing interest with a focus on manipulating microbes, especially plant growth-promoting microbes, to increase plant health and growth by facilitating plant nutrient uptake, suppressing plant diseases, and enhancing their water-use efficiency. In addition, the development of biofertilizers and biopesticides is also gaining attention, as these environment-friendly alternatives to agricultural chemical inputs (e.g., fertilizers and pesticides) can help to control pests and diseases in crops, while providing essential nutrients to plants.

The prospects of microbial engineering technology in agriculture are promising, with the potential to address key challenges, such as climate change, soil degradation, and food security. However, further research is still needed to advance our understanding of its capabilities and limitations.

For this Special Issue, topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Microbial biotechnology in agriculture;
• Strategies to enhance soil health and fertility by manipulating microbes;
• Microbial-based plant disease management;
• Microbial roles in stress tolerance, nutrient loss or greenhouse gas emissions;
• Microbial-based nitrogen fixation;
• Microbial-based bioremediation;
• Microbial communities and their impacts on food safety.

Dr. Kaile Zhang
Dr. Laibin Huang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. AgriEngineering is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• microbial biotechnology
• agricultural microbiomes
• soil health and fertility, soil–microbe–plant interactions
• amplicon sequencing
• metagenomics
• bioremediation