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Special Issue "Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production"

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A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Farming Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 29 February 2024 | Viewed by 4155

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jinlong Dong

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Guest Editor

State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Interests: soil science; plant nutrition; sustainable vegetable production; planetary boundary; human nutrition; climate changes
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Prof. Dr. Junjie Lin

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Key Laboratory of Water Environment Evolution and Pollution Control in Three Gorges Reservoir, Chongqing Three Gorges University, Chongqing 404100, China
Interests: soil organic carbon; climate change
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Dr. Yang Yang

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State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710061, China
Interests: soil science; microbial ecology; global change ecology
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Dr. Zhongxiu Sun

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College of Land and Environment, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
Interests: pedogenesis; soil geography; loess-paleosol evolution; paleoclimate change; soil health evaluation
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Prof. Dr. Nazim Gruda

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INRES—Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation, Division of Horticultural Sciences, University of Bonn, 53121 Bonn, Germany
Interests: vegetables; climate change; horticulture; soilless culture; growing media; protected cultivation; greenhouse production
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change refers to long-term temperature shifts and weather patterns dramatically affected by anthropogenic activities. In the past several decades, researchers have intensively focused on the impact of climate change, such as elevated CO₂, increasing temperature, abrupt drought or heat stresses, and weather extremes, on crop production and quality. Questions have arisen regarding how to feed the increasing global population, what the agricultural industry should do to mitigate this impact, and how sustainable plant production should contribute to reducing this impact. Furthermore, the deterioration in grain and edible horticultural crops results in “hidden hunger” threatening human health. To sustainably produce food, the agricultural ecosystem needs to alleviate the negative impact on the climate through various mechanisms, such as decreased greenhouse gas (CO₂, N₂O, and CH₄) emissions, water use efficiency, and increased soil carbon sequestration. However, we lack a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the interactions between climate change and agriculture with which to achieve sustainable food production and mitigate the potential impact on the climate.

This Special Issue of Agronomy focuses on the interplay between climate change and agriculture. New research papers, reviews, case studies, and reports are welcome to be submitted to this Special Issue. Papers dealing with new approaches or modeling within agricultural ecosystems are also welcome. Other accepted manuscript types include methodological papers, position papers, brief reports, and commentaries. We will accept manuscripts from different disciplines related to this topic, including agricultural meteorology, agronomy, horticulture, soil science, plant science, paleoclimatology, environmental nutrition, and ecology.

Topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

The impact of climate change on crop production and quality, biogeochemistry, soil nutrient (C, N, and P) cycles, pedogenesis, and soil health;
Greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural ecosystems;
How to achieve sustainable food production under a changing climate;
Climate change associated with food supply chains and human dietary patterns;
Paleoclimatology and its relationship with agriculture;
The rewetting of peatland and reducing the use of peat in horticulture;
How agricultural ecosystems adapt to climate change.

Dr. Jinlong Dong
Prof. Dr. Junjie Lin
Dr. Yang Yang
Dr. Zhongxiu Sun
Prof. Dr. Nazim Gruda
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. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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.

Keywords

climate change
soil health
sustainable food production
nutrient cycle
agricultural ecosystem
human nutrition

Published Papers (8 papers)

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Research

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14 pages, 2539 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effect of Elevated Air Temperature on the Growth and Yield of Paddy Rice

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Agronomy 2023, 13(12), 2887; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13122887 - 24 Nov 2023

Viewed by 215

Abstract

Rice is one of the major food crops, particularly in Asia. However, it is vulnerable to high temperature and has high yield fluctuations. Monitoring crop growth and physiological responses to high temperatures can help us better understand the agricultural impacts of global warming. The aim of this study is to monitor growth, development, and physiological responses to high temperature conditions on paddy rice and to assess their combined effects on yield. In this study, changes to growth, maturity, and senescence in paddy rice throughout the growing season were identified under elevated air temperature conditions created by a temperature gradient field chamber (TGFC). That facility provides a gradient from the ambient air temperature (AT) to 3 °C above AT (AT + 3 °C). To represent crop physiology and productivity, we measured the plant height, chlorophyll, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and maximum photosynthetic rate (A_max) to assess growth and physiological processes, and heat stress effects on four yield measurements were assessed using the heating degree day index. Rice height increased more rapidly in the AT + 3 °C treatment from the early growth stage to heading, while SPAD and NDVI decreased more rapidly at AT after heading. The A_max of AT and AT + 3 °C was not significantly different in the tillering stage. However, it was higher at AT in the booting stage but higher at AT + 3 °C in the grain filling stage. These results indicate that paddy rice was not affected by heat stress at the tillering stage, but a cumulative effect emerged by the booting stage. Further, photosynthetic capacity was maintained much later into the grain filling stage at AT + 3 °C. These results will be useful for understanding the growth and physiological responses of paddy rice to global warming. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production)

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16 pages, 763 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Influence of Interannual Climate Conditions on the Composition of Olive Oil from Centenarian Olive Trees

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Agronomy 2023, 13(12), 2884; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13122884 - 24 Nov 2023

Viewed by 229

Abstract

In recent years, occurrences of heat waves and drought have become increasingly frequent, highlighting the undeniable impact of climate change. The rise in temperatures and decline in rainfall have had severe repercussions on olive trees’ behavior and olive oil production. This study aims to evaluate the effects of two-year climate variations on olive oils from centenarian olive trees situated in the Côa Valley region of Northern Portugal. A selection of 25 centenarian plants was made, and the climate influence on fatty acid content, tocopherols, individual phenols, oxidative stability, and antioxidant activity was assessed over two consecutive years. During the second year of the study, a significant variation (p-value < 0.05) in the proportion of palmitic acid was observed, which increased from 12.9% to 13.6%. Conversely, stearic and arachidic acids exhibited a decrease from 2.7% to 2.3% and from 0.37% to 0.35%, respectively. Analysis of the oils revealed a noteworthy difference (p-value < 0.05) in the concentration of β-tocopherol. The concentration of oils derived from hydroxytyrosol and tyrosol significantly decreases (p-value < 0.005) during the second year. Additionally, significant differences (p-value < 0.005) were observed in the total phenol content and the percentage of ABTS inhibition, both of which decreased in the second year. These findings reinforce the notion that climatic conditions play a key role in shaping the composition of olive oils. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production)

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20 pages, 7829 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Regional NDVI Attribution Analysis and Trend Prediction Based on the Informer Model: A Case Study of the Maowusu Sandland

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Agronomy 2023, 13(12), 2882; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13122882 - 23 Nov 2023

Viewed by 256

Abstract

Terrestrial ecosystems depend heavily on their vegetation; it is possible to forecast future growth trends of regional vegetation by keeping an eye on changes in vegetation dynamics. To circumvent the potential reduction in prediction accuracy caused by the non-stationarity of meteorological changes, we analyzed the characteristics of NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) spatial and temporal changes and the influencing factors over the past 20 years in the Maowusu Sandland of China via attribution analysis. We also constructed a comprehensive analysis system for vegetation pre-restoration. Moreover, we combined meteorological data from 2000 to 2018 and presented a deep-learning NDVI-Informer prediction model with a self-attentive mechanism. We also used distillation operation and fusion convolutional neural network for NDVI prediction. Incorporating a probsparse self-attention method successfully overcomes Transformer weaknesses by lowering the memory use and complexity of large time series. It significantly accelerates the inference speed of long time series prediction and works well with non-smooth data. The primary findings were: (1) the Maowusu Sandland’s 20-year average showed a consistent increasing trend in the NDVI at 0.0034 a⁻¹, which was mostly caused by climate change, with a relative contribution rate of 55.47%; (2) The Informer-based model accurately forecasted the NDVI in the research region based on meteorological elements and conducted a thorough analysis of the MAPE (mean absolute percentage error) (2.24%). This suggests that it can effectively lower the data’s volatility and increase prediction accuracy. The anticipated outcomes indicate that the trend will stabilize during the following ten years. To attain more sustainable and efficient agricultural production, the results of this study may be used to accurately estimate future crop yields and NDVI using previous data. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production)

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18 pages, 2729 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effect of Low Temperature on Photosynthetic Characteristics, Senescence Characteristics, and Endogenous Hormones of Winter Wheat “Ji Mai 22” during the Jointing Stage

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Agronomy 2023, 13(10), 2650; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13102650 - 21 Oct 2023

Viewed by 678

Abstract

To investigate the effects of low-temperature (LT) stress on photosynthetic properties and senescence characteristics of winter wheat leaves during the jointing stage, an environmental temperature control experiment was designed at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in 2023, using Triticum aestivum L. cv. “Ji Mai 22” as the test material. Four different temperature levels were set: 18 °C/8 °C (daily maximum/daily minimum temperature; CK), 13 °C/3 °C, 10 °C/0 °C, and 7 °C/3 °C. The duration of each treatment was 2, 4, and 6 days, respectively. The experimental findings reveal that the changes in physiological parameters of winter wheat leaves under low-temperature stress treatments are nonlinear. Under the 3 °C LT treatment, the photosynthetic parameters and endogenous hormone levels of wheat leaves significantly decrease after 6 days of stress. Under the 0 °C LT treatment, the photosynthetic parameters, leaf pigment content, and endogenous hormones of wheat decrease significantly, while under the −3 °C LT treatment, all the parameters of winter wheat leaves show a significant decline. Generally, the “Ji Mai22” wheat cultivar has a lower growth temperature limit of −3 °C during the jointing stage. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production)

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12 pages, 3464 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Quantitative Reconstruction of Nutrient Changes of Quaternary Red Soils (Luvisols) Affected by Land-Use Patterns

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Agronomy 2023, 13(9), 2386; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13092386 - 14 Sep 2023

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Abstract

The Quaternary red soil widely distributed in China is an important arable land resource. A quantitative understanding of nutrient changes of Quaternary red soils under different land-use patterns is the necessary premise for effective regulation, management, and sustainable utilization. In this study, five typical Quaternary red soil profiles under different land-use patterns were taken as the research object in Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province, China. The results showed that: (1) Buried Quaternary red soils were minimally affected by external disturbances. The contents of nitrogen (around 0.02%), phosphorus (ranging from 0.06% to 0.07%), and potassium (ranging from 3.12% to 3.50%) were at relatively low levels and homogeneously distributed with depth. (2) The total nitrogen content of red soils under each land-use pattern showed an increasing trend in the upper part of the profile (A and B horizons), and a sequence of woodland (CL-04) > grassland (CL-03) > arable land (CL-05) = sparse forest–grassland (CL-02). The nitrogen content in the lower part of different land-use patterns was about 0.02%. The phosphorus content of the topsoil layer remained unchanged (ranging from 0.05% to 0.06%), while the subsoil phosphorus decreased to varying extents. The potassium experienced leaching in both topsoil and subsoil layers, with the topsoil losses being lower than that in the subsoil. The range of total potassium content in the grassland (CL-03) ranged from 2.64% to 4.21%, from 3.91% to 4.44% for sparse forest–grassland (CL-02), from 2.41% to 2.63% for woodland (CL-04), and 2.85% to 2.92% for arable land (CL-05), respectively. The variation in nutrient content was related to the vegetation type, coverage rate, artificial fertilization method and species, etc. The accumulative mass change in the sparse forest–grassland increased by 384.16 g/100 cm², and the other land-use patterns showed a decreasing trend of arable land (83.71 g/100 cm²) > woodland (83.71 g/100 cm²) > grassland (83.71 g/100 cm²), with the topsoil leaching losses being smaller than those in the subsoil layer. The characteristics of windbreak, sand fixation, and soil and water conservation of the sparse forest–grassland could well hold the nutrient-rich loess sediments, resulting in increased nutrients in the Quaternary red soil, which is a reasonable land-use pattern for the Chaoyang area. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production)

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18 pages, 3962 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Establishing a Soil Health Assessment System for Quaternary Red Soils (Luvisols) under Different Land Use Patterns

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Agronomy 2023, 13(8), 2026; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13082026 - 30 Jul 2023

Viewed by 598

Abstract

The health status of Quaternary red soil is a comprehensive reflection of the production and ecological service functions, which directly affects agricultural productivity and ecosystem sustainability. Based on the Cornell Soil Health Assessment (CASH) system frame, a health evaluation system for Quaternary red soils was established including the soil’s physical, chemical, and biological indicators. The soil’s health status under different land use patterns (the buried Quaternary red soil, sparse forest and grassland, grassland, woodland, and arable land) was systematically diagnosed in the low hilly region of western Liaoning Province. The results showed significant differences in the soil health comprehensive index of the Quaternary red soils under different land use patterns (the whole soil), presenting a trend of woodland (0.64) > arable land (0.61) > grassland (0.49) > sparse forest and grassland (0.37) > buried Quaternary red soils (0.33). The woodland and arable land are at a healthy level, the grassland and sparse forest and grassland are at a sub-healthy level, and the buried Quaternary red soil is at an unhealthy level. The health status of the topsoil layer (A) under different land use patterns has a trend of woodland (0.86) > arable land (0.73) > grassland (0.70) > sparse forest and grassland (0.67). This is consistent with the overall health status of the profile, better than that of subsoil layer (B), which presents a trend of arable land (0.41) > grassland (0.40) > woodland (0.38) > sparse forest and grassland (0.34), with relatively poor soil health conditions. Overall, the soil health status of the four land use patterns is better than that of the buried Quaternary red soils, showing an evolution trend towards healthy soil. This indicates that at this stage, human land use activities have to some extent promoted the healthy development of Quaternary red soils. The Quaternary red soils of the woodland have a healthy status, and the land use pattern is suitable and can be scientifically recommended in low mountain and hilly areas. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production)

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13 pages, 669 KiB

Open AccessReview

Early Maturity Mechanism and High-Yielding Cultivation of Short-Season Cotton in China

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Agronomy 2023, 13(11), 2770; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13112770 - 06 Nov 2023

Viewed by 507

Abstract

Short-season cotton is a type of cotton variety characterized by its abbreviated cycle, rapid development, and concentrated flowering and boll setting. Compared with full-season cotton, short-season cotton facilitates an easier attainment of desirable maturation even when sown relatively late. This advantage of late sowing and early maturation eliminates the necessity for plastic film mulching, thereby creating opportunities for diversified double cropping, such as cotton–wheat, cotton–garlic, cotton–rape, and cotton–triticale systems. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the morphological, physiological, and molecular biological mechanisms underlying early maturity in short-season cotton. Furthermore, the significance and application of short-season cotton is discussed in relation to optimizing planting patterns and methods, promoting its cultivation in saline fields, developing machine-harvested cotton, and encouraging plastic mulch-free cotton planting. Based on these analyses and discussions, the paper proposes future strategies aimed at enhancing the breeding and cultivation of short-season cotton. These findings serve as valuable references for global breeding and cultivation research, and application of short-season cotton in the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production)

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24 pages, 2489 KiB

Open AccessReview

The Evaluation of Carbon Farming Strategies in Organic Vegetable Cultivation

Dan Ioan Avasiloaiei

Mariana Calara

Petre Marian Brezeanu

Nazim S. Gruda

and

Creola Brezeanu

Agronomy 2023, 13(9), 2406; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13092406 - 18 Sep 2023

Viewed by 869

Abstract

The urgent need to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has prompted the exploration of various strategies, including the adaptation of carbon farming practices, to achieve sustainability in agricultural systems. In this research, we assess the viability of carbon farming practices for organic vegetable growing in Europe. The study explores the potential benefits of these practices, including GHG emissions’ mitigation and improved soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystem services, while also acknowledging the need for further research to optimize implementation strategies and foster widespread adoption. However, the suitability and effectiveness of carbon farming practices in organic vegetable production systems remain uncertain. The analysis considers the measurement and estimation methods employed to assess changes in soil carbon stocks and the potential environmental and economic implications for farmers. Despite a substantial body of data demonstrating the sustainable attributes of carbon farming and its multifaceted advantages, a degree of hesitancy persists. Considering this, we propose undertaking a concise strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis to evaluate multiple aspects of carbon farming. The findings reveal that carbon farming practices can be viable and advantageous in organic vegetable production. Carbon farming practices, such as cover cropping, reduced tillage, compost application, and agroforestry, can significantly enhance the sustainability of organic farming systems. Implementing these practices can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, improve soil health and fertility, and promote biodiversity conservation. Farmer education and support, policy measures, and continued research are crucial for maximizing the potential of these practices for a sustainable future. These practices also contribute to developing climate-friendly agricultural systems, promoting environmental resilience, and reducing the ecological footprint of organic vegetable production. However, further research is needed to optimize implementation strategies, address site-specific challenges, and foster widespread adoption of carbon farming practices in organic vegetable production. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Agriculture—Sustainable Plant Production)

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