Agronomy

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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The interaction between soil and plants plays an important role in water and nutrient dynamics in an ecosystem. The function of nutrients, biomass, and water recycling are important for social, economic, and environmental benefits and also for providing various ecosystem services. Soil quality in the rhizosphere promotes vegetation growth and helps to maintain the functionality of the soil–plant system. The soil–plant system is likely to be damaged due to weak integrated agricultural management approaches. In order to tackle this, sustainable and intelligent agriculture that involves new methods of remediation of soil conditions and crop modeling is promoted; however, its feasibility in field conditions needs further development. The development of new biomaterials that are economical and also feasible in field applications (in the long term) still requires further exploration. Therefore, applications of sustainable management approaches and intelligent measurements are necessary in soil–plant systems.

This Special Issue invites original research, technology reports, modeling approaches and methods, and reviews on sustainable management and intelligence in soil–plant systems. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

Sustainable management (e.g., optimized irrigation and fertilizer practices, cropping systems, and agronomic strategies) on the improvement of soil quality, plant growth, productivity, and tolerance to drought;
Implications of intelligent methods (e.g., sensing techniques; multiple scales of phenotyping platforms) on soil and vegetation health monitoring;
Interactions between agricultural water/fertilizer management and the environment;
Interactions between soil and plants in contaminated soils;
New biomaterials for improving water use efficiency in soil–plant systems;
Applications of the unsaturated soil concept in sustainable agriculture;
Development of IoT-based devices and APPs for smart agriculture.

Dr. Xuguang Xing
Dr. Ankit Garg
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.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (1 paper)

Research

15 pages, 8507 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dependence of the Pea Grain Yield on Climatic Factors under Semi-Arid Conditions

by Vasiliy Gudko, Alexander Usatov, Tatiana Minkina, Nadezhda Duplii, Kirill Azarin, Tatiana V. Tatarinova, Svetlana Sushkova, Ankit Garg and Yuri Denisenko

Agronomy 2024, 14(1), 133; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14010133 - 4 Jan 2024

Viewed by 1043

Abstract

Field peas are one of the most common crops and are grown in various climatic zones. However, the productivity of this crop can be largely limited by climatic factors. This study investigated the influence of climatic factors on pea grain yield in the semi-arid conditions of the Rostov region of Russia in 2008–2020. To quantify climatic factors, agro-climatic variables were used, such as total temperatures below the minimum temperature, the number of days with temperatures below the minimum temperature, total temperatures above the critical temperature, the number of days with temperatures above the critical temperature, and the Selyaninov hydrothermal coefficient. Agro-climatic variables were calculated using daily climatic variables, such as maximum and minimum temperatures, relative air humidity, and precipitation during pea growing season (April–June). The yield of the pea varied from 90 to 250 kg/ha. In general, the productivity of peas is negatively affected by high temperatures and low humidification level. The yield is negatively correlated with accumulative temperatures above the critical temperature and the number of days with temperatures above the critical temperature and positively correlated with the Selyaninov hydrothermal coefficient and the precipitation in all analyzed areas. The influence of the accumulative temperatures above the critical temperature is the most significant. It explains between 6.6% and 78.9% of the interannual variability of the pea yield. The increase in accumulative temperatures above the critical threshold by every 1 °C will contribute to a decrease in pea grain yield by an average of 0.150 kg/ha. The maximum temperatures in May and June (the period of flowering–grain filling) have the most negative impact on the yield. A 1 °C increase in the average maximum temperature during this period will contribute to a decrease in pea yield by an average of 19.175 kg/ha. The influence of total precipitation during the growing season explains between 12.3% and 50.0% of the variability. The 1 mm decrease in the total precipitation for the growing season will lead to a decrease in pea yields by an average of 0.736 kg/ha. The results of this study can be applied to regional yield forecasting, as well as predicting the impact of climate variability on the grain yield of pea crops in arid areas. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Improving Functioning of Soil–Plant Systems Using the Application of Sustainable and Intelligent Methods—2nd Edition)

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