Recycling Agricultural Waste towards Low Carbon

Dear Colleagues,

Promoting the comprehensive and sustainable utilization of agricultural waste is one of the most important aspects in the realization of agricultural modernization and improving the green and low-carbon circular economy system. Agricultural waste generally includes crop straw and livestock and poultry breeding waste. While harvesting crops, returning straw to the field can provide rich organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and trace elements for cultivated land fertility. This can improve soil fertility, increase soil carbon sink and promote low-carbon development. For livestock and poultry breeding waste, composting and fermentation can not only alleviate the pollution of breeding emissions but also convert them into organic fertilizer and biomass energy for reuse, so as to promote the sustainable development of animal husbandry. Therefore, guided by low-carbon development, agricultural waste can be comprehensively recycled to promote the green development of agriculture and animal husbandry. At the same time, it can also form moderate, green and low-carbon production and lifestyles and cultivate new green and low-carbon growth points.

At present, the comprehensive utilization of agricultural waste is mainly based on direct return to the field, simple composting and other utilization methods, which have high collection costs, low collection rates, low added values of products and low application degrees. Therefore, in order to improve the application value of agricultural waste in the direction of low-carbon development, further research and improvement are needed to develop some more efficient, novel, sustainable and environmentally friendly utilization modes, such as accelerating the agricultural application of biochar prepared via straw pyrolysis, exploring new technologies for conversion into biomass energy, developing new facilities for efficient fermentation, creating fertilizers suitable for various purposes and combining planting and breeding to achieve industrial integration. This Special Issue aims to provide a platform for researchers to further explore new ways to develop agricultural waste recycling to achieve low-carbon development, build a full-chain, comprehensive utilization system of agricultural waste, promote the development of resource utilization and environmental protection industries, and accelerate the formation of new drivers of economic development.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Recycling agricultural waste towards biochar;
• Recycling agricultural waste towards biomass energy;
• Recycling agricultural waste towards soil remediation;
• Recycling agricultural waste towards soil fertility;
• Recycling agricultural waste towards fertilizer;
• Recycling agricultural waste towards a combination of planting and breeding.

Prof. Dr. Zhongxin Tan
Prof. Dr. Tong Chen
Dr. Yanming Li
Guest Editors

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• agricultural waste
• biochar
• soil
• low carbon
• CO₂