Several decades of poor management of agroecosystems have led to severe environmental issues such as land degradation, soil and water contamination, depletion of natural resources, and drastic reduction of biodiversity. These issues, along with factors such as potential increase of pathogens due to global warming, economic instability, and rapid population growth, provide for alarming awareness that we must change the face of agriculture in order to make sustainable and resourceful decisions for future generations.
A sustainable management of agroecosystems is based on multidisciplinary research that integrates knowledge from different fields such as soil science, agronomy, microbiology, OMICS, biotechnology, economics, etc. An efficient agroecosystem should be able to produce high quality food with minimal soil disturbance, using fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides, increasing soil organic matter and natural fertility over time, improving the soil microbial community and the ecosystem biodiversity over time.
Agricultural systems adopting no-tillage, cover crops, and crop rotations, for example, can improve ecosystem biodiversity and soil organic matter content, consequently enhancing soil natural fertility and the biodiversity of microbial communities.
Soil microbiome composition and diversity can be an important bioindicator of soil quality and can be also used to monitoring and compare different agricultural systems.
This Research Topic is intended to solicit high quality, original research on the following or alternatively-related subject matters:
- Soil microbiome
- Soil microbial diversity
- Crop rotation and cover crops influence on soil microbial community
- Tillage and no-tillage effects on soil microbiome
- Soil metagenomes of agroecosystems
Several decades of poor management of agroecosystems have led to severe environmental issues such as land degradation, soil and water contamination, depletion of natural resources, and drastic reduction of biodiversity. These issues, along with factors such as potential increase of pathogens due to global warming, economic instability, and rapid population growth, provide for alarming awareness that we must change the face of agriculture in order to make sustainable and resourceful decisions for future generations.
A sustainable management of agroecosystems is based on multidisciplinary research that integrates knowledge from different fields such as soil science, agronomy, microbiology, OMICS, biotechnology, economics, etc. An efficient agroecosystem should be able to produce high quality food with minimal soil disturbance, using fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides, increasing soil organic matter and natural fertility over time, improving the soil microbial community and the ecosystem biodiversity over time.
Agricultural systems adopting no-tillage, cover crops, and crop rotations, for example, can improve ecosystem biodiversity and soil organic matter content, consequently enhancing soil natural fertility and the biodiversity of microbial communities.
Soil microbiome composition and diversity can be an important bioindicator of soil quality and can be also used to monitoring and compare different agricultural systems.
This Research Topic is intended to solicit high quality, original research on the following or alternatively-related subject matters:
- Soil microbiome
- Soil microbial diversity
- Crop rotation and cover crops influence on soil microbial community
- Tillage and no-tillage effects on soil microbiome
- Soil metagenomes of agroecosystems
