Integrated Management Tactics for Resilient and Sustainable Vegetable Crops Production

Dear Colleagues,

Horticultural production systems are currently trying to meet consumer demand for affordable food while improving sustainability. In recent decades, the management of intensive crops has aimed at maximizing yield, thus creating unstable, fragile, and non-sustainable production systems. Such systems are subject to reduced soil quality, increased pest and disease susceptibility, reduced tolerance to abiotic stresses, lower food quality, and negative impact on the health and wellbeing of our communities.

Recently, there has been a clear move toward the improvement of vegetable production systems following increasing consumer awareness of produce quality, nutritional value, and crop production impact on the environment, and grower interest in developing resilient and stable production systems. This goal could be achieved by adopting production practices that improve soil health and fertility, crop productivity, and enhance farm profitability together with farm sustainability.

Such practices put emphasis on the use of natural processes within vegetable crop systems, which induce resilience through synergies and complementarities at different levels (within the field, the farm, and communities). Among these practices, we can include conservation (or reduced) tillage systems, cover cropping, crop diversity including crop rotations and intercropping, use of suitable crop cultivars or resilient and neglected species, efficient water and nitrogen use, balanced nutrient management plans, and plant growth promoting product or microorganism application.

Vegetable production systems are complex and dynamic and can involve a diverse number of production practices. The study of integrated management of production practices could help to increase the resilience and sustainability of vegetable crop.

This Special Issue aims to collect research papers and reviews focusing on “Integrated Management Tactics for Resilient and Sustainable Vegetable Crops Production”. Therefore, research articles, reviews, short notes, and opinion articles related to the effects of innovative agricultural practices and their integrated management on vegetable crop resilience and sustainability are welcome in this Special Issue.

Dr. Alessandro Miceli
Dr. Alessandra Moncada
Guest Editors

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