Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.4
4.5
Journals
Plants
Special Issues
Sustainable Mechanisms for Crop Development, Productivity and Quality Promotion
share announcement

Sustainable Mechanisms for Crop Development, Productivity and Quality Promotion

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Physiology and Crop Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2024 | Viewed by 1267

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Kęstutis Romaneckas

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agroecosystems and Soi Sciences, Agriculture Academy, Vytautas Magnus University, LT-53361 Akademija, Kaunas reg., Lithuania
Interests: more sustainable tillage and sowing systems; field crop management; crop production; quality and safety; inter-cropping; multi-cropping; soil properties and GHG emissions; weed and pest management; organic and precision farming; biomass producing for biofuel processing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Modern intensive unbalanced agriculture initiates physical, chemical, and biological soil degradation, decreases in soil and crop biodiversity, pests and weeds developing resistance to pesticides, increases in GHG emissions and energy consumption, and risks of food pollutions. Environmentally friendly and energy-efficient farming technologies are being integrated into agricultural production systems with the greatest economic, energy, and environmental benefits. There are several sustainable ways prevent problems and warrant successful crop growth, productivity, and quality development: balance fertilizers and/or pesticides, new generation crop varieties and seed treatments, and more sustainable and precise ploughless tillage and seedbed preparation technologies.

In addition, this Special Issue will present investigations on new-generation organic or nano-organic, bio-organic, bacteria-inoculated fertilizers and bio-preparations for primary and additional fertilization, bio-pesticides, combinations of mechanical, physical, and biological control of harmful organisms, and crop functionality increase by cover-cropping, inter-cropping, and multi-cropping. Research data on technologies economy, energy, and environmental impact are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Kęstutis Romaneckas
Guest Editor

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. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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

  • sustainable agrotechnologies
  • crops development and yields
  • quality formation and assessment

Published Papers (2 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

21 pages, 3482 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of the Productivity and Potential Utilization of Artemisia dubia Plant Biomass for Energy Conversion
by Algirdas Jasinskas, Gintaras Šiaudinis, Danutė Karčauskienė, Renata-Marks Bielska, Marek Marks, Stanislaw Bielski, Ramūnas Mieldažys, Kęstutis Romaneckas and Egidijus Šarauskis
Plants 2024, 13(8), 1158; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13081158 - 22 Apr 2024
Viewed by 364
Abstract
Field studies with the large-stemmed plant Artemisia dubia (A. dubia) have been carried out at the Vėžaičiai Branch of LAMMC since 2018. According to three years of experimental results, annual dry matter (DM) yield varied from 7.94 to 10.14 t ha [...] Read more.
Field studies with the large-stemmed plant Artemisia dubia (A. dubia) have been carried out at the Vėžaičiai Branch of LAMMC since 2018. According to three years of experimental results, annual dry matter (DM) yield varied from 7.94 to 10.14 t ha−1. Growing conditions, nitrogen application level, and harvesting time had statistically significant impacts on A. dubia productivity. The most important tasks of this article were to investigate and determine the factors influencing A. dubia plant biomass productivity and the evaluation of technological, power, and environmental parameters of plant biomass utilization for energy conversion and the production of high-quality solid biofuel pellets. For the experiments, six variants of A. dubia samples were used, which were grown in 2021. Plants were cut three times and two fertilization options were used: (1) no fertilization and (2) fertilization with 180 kg ha−1 of nitrogen fertilizer. These harvested plants were chopped, milled, and pressed into pellets. The physical–mechanical characteristics (moisture content, density, and strength) of the A. dubia pellets were investigated. During this study, it was found that the density in the dry mass (DM) of the pellets ranged from 1119.86 to 1192.44 kg m−3. The pellet moisture content ranged from 8.80 to 10.49%. After testing pellet strength, it was found that the pellets which were made from plant biomass PK-1-1 (first harvest without N fertilization) were the most resistant to compression, and they withstood 560.36 N of pressure. The dry fuel lower heating value (LHV) of the pellets was sufficiently high and was very close to that of the pine sawdust pellets; it varied from 17.46 ± 0.25 MJ kg−1 to 18.14 ± 0.28 MJ kg−1. The ash content of the burned pellets ranged from 3.62 ± 0.02% to 6.47 ± 0.09%. Emissions of harmful pollutants—CO2, CO, NOx, and unburnt hydrocarbons (CxHy)—did not exceed the maximum permissible levels. Summarizing the results for the investigated properties of the combustion and emissions of the A. dubia pellets, it can be concluded that this biofuel can be used for the production of pressed biofuel, and it is characterized by sufficiently high quality, efficient combustion, and permissible emissions to the environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Mechanisms for Crop Development, Productivity and Quality Promotion)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 1803 KiB  
Article
The Complex Effect of Different Tillage Systems on the Faba Bean Agroecosystem
by Rasa Kimbirauskienė, Aušra Sinkevičienė, Austėja Švereikaitė and Kęstutis Romaneckas
Plants 2024, 13(4), 513; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13040513 - 13 Feb 2024
Viewed by 584
Abstract
The interactions of the different factors in differently tilled faba bean agroecosystems are still insufficiently studied and evaluated. For these reasons, we studied the results of a long-term field experiment, which was carried out in the Research Station of Vytautas Magnus University, Agriculture [...] Read more.
The interactions of the different factors in differently tilled faba bean agroecosystems are still insufficiently studied and evaluated. For these reasons, we studied the results of a long-term field experiment, which was carried out in the Research Station of Vytautas Magnus University, Agriculture Academy (Lithuania). The aim of this study is to comprehensively evaluate the effect of the deep ploughing (DP), shallow ploughing (SP), deep cultivation, chiseling (DC), shallow cultivation-disking (SC), and no-tillage (NT) systems for the faba bean agroecosystem on the complex interactions of the indices, the relations among the indices, and the strength of the impact; the study employs the integrated evaluation method, which uses the complex evaluation index (CEI). CEI values showed that the NT system had a greater effect on the increase of soil aggregate stability (61%), the decrease of CO2 emissions (12%), and the increase of seed yield (6%) than the DP system. However, the NT system had 36% and 20% higher effect on weed density and biomass increase than DP. CEI values of the DP system were often minimal, i.e., close to 1, which showed the DP system’s ineffectiveness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Mechanisms for Crop Development, Productivity and Quality Promotion)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-2

Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: Energy and Environmental Assessment of Maize Legumes-Intercropped Cultivations
Authors: Kęstutis Romaneckas; Austėja Švereikaitė; Rasa Kimbirauskienė; Aušra Sinkevičienė
Affiliation: Vytautas Magnus University, Agriculture Academy, Lithuania

Back to TopTop