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Selected Papers from Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios

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A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Farming Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2022) | Viewed by 17192

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Miguel A. A. Pinheiro De Carvalho

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Guest Editor

Plant Biochemistry and Enzymology, Coordinator of ISOPlexis Centre, University of Madeira, Campus Universitário da Penteada, 9020-105 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal
Interests: agrodiversity; genetic resources; plant biochemistry; biochemistry of abiotic stresses

Dr. Jan Slaski

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Guest Editor

InnoTech Alberta, Hwy 16A & 75 Street, P.O Box 4000, Vegreville, AB T9C 1T4, Canada
Interests: agronomy; diversification; physiology of abiotic stresses
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Carla Gouveia

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Guest Editor

ISOPlexis Centre Sustainable Agriculture and Food Technology, University of Madeira, 9020-105 Funchal, Portugal
Interests: plant environmental stress physiology; agricultural plant science; food composition; plant biochemistry

Dr. Carla Ragonezi

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Guest Editor

1. ISOPlexis Centre Sustainable Agriculture and Food Technology, University of Madeira, 9020-105 Funchal, Portugal
2. CITAB - Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: soil microbiological diversity; plant–microbe interactions; plants; biotechnology; tissue culture; sustainable agriculture; food crops
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is expected to aggravate in the next 30–50 years, resulting in more extreme weather occurrences, increased evaporative demand of water, and increasing carbon dioxide, which will distinctly affect agriculture, agrosystems, and crop productivity worldwide. Climate change is a global concern, and there is an urgent demand for global and local strategies in these new climate scenarios to ensure food sustainability for a growing world population. The Symposium “Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios”, provides an excellent opportunity for discussion and exchange of knowledge and experience between students, researchers, industry members, stakeholders, and policymakers that share an interest or recent findings regarding climate change and food sustainability. The main topics of the Symposium include the current status, advances, and challenges in the impacts of climate change in agriculture; crop resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses; water management in agriculture; climate-smart agriculture; and the impact of climate change on food security and diet. Additional information can be found at https://www.afss2021.com/.

Dr. Miguel A. A. Pinheiro De Carvalho
Dr. Jan Slaski
Dr. Carla Gouveia
Dr. Carla Ragonezi
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.

Keywords

Abiotic stress
Biotic stress
Crop production
Evapotranspiration
Food security
Food sustainability
Photosynthesis
Precision agriculture
Water management

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

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30 pages, 6543 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Anticipating the Climate Change Impacts on Madeira’s Agriculture: The Characterization and Monitoring of a Vine Agrosystem

by Miguel Â. A. Pinheiro de Carvalho, Carla Ragonezi, Maria Cristina O. Oliveira, Fábio Reis, Fabrício Lopes Macedo, José G. R. de Freitas, Humberto Nóbrega and José Filipe T. Ganança

Agronomy 2022, 12(9), 2201; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy12092201 - 16 Sep 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2484

Abstract

Climate—Madeira Strategy (CMS) foresees two models to describe the climate scenarios for the Madeira region in 2050 and 2070. These scenarios anticipate an average temperature rise of 1.4 to 3.7 °C and a decrease in precipitation by 30 to 40%. Consequently, Madeira’s agriculture will suffer the impacts of climate change. To understand these impacts, a baseline of major agrosystem components needs to be established, with the ultimate goal to monitor its consequences in its functioning. CASBio project used the 1961–1991 and 2010–2020 meteorological data series to modulate climate conditions and characterize and monitor six agrosystems for 2 years. One of them was a vineyard, Quinta das Vinhas, representing a typical agrosystem in the Mediterranean climate. The annual and seasonal variation in climatic parameters, soil conditions, microbiological communities, floristic and insect diversity, and crop production was assessed, using a total of 50 parameters. The results were used to establish a baseline of the agrosystem components and their seasonal and annual variation. The major findings are: (i) winter and summer extreme events show a trend in temperature and precipitation supporting a fast change in climate; (ii) a critical imbalance between nitrogen-fixing and denitrifying bacteria was identified, especially in summer, that could be determined by the rise in temperature and drought; (iii) among floristic diversity, the therophytes and geophytes confirm to be the most suitable indicators for the rise in temperature and reduction in precipitation in the agrosystems; (iv) an imbalance in favor of C. capitata plague was observed, associated with the summer rise in temperature and decrease in precipitation; (v) despite an increase in most of the grape varieties production, the Madeiran wine local varieties were shown to be less stable in productivity under observed climate conditions. The agrosystem baseline is a starting point for long-term monitoring and allows for further quantifying the influence of climate change on agrosystem productivity, resilience, and sustainability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios)

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18 pages, 3893 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sewage Sludge Fertilization—A Case Study of Sweet Potato Yield and Heavy Metal Accumulation

by Carla Ragonezi, Nuno Nunes, Maria Cristina O. Oliveira, José G. R. de Freitas, José Filipe T. Ganança and Miguel Â. A. Pinheiro de Carvalho

Agronomy 2022, 12(8), 1902; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy12081902 - 13 Aug 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2415

Abstract

Sewage sludge (SS) is derived from wastewater treatment plants and can be used as a biofertilizer when properly stabilized. This work aimed to evaluate SS application for agricultural production improvement. SS was tested on Porto Santo Island (Portugal). The experiment was randomly designed with three 25 m² plots for each treatment (2 SS concentrations + control without SS) and performed in two consecutive cycles. For the first cycle, dehydrated sludge was mixed with soil, obtaining final concentrations of 0.8 kg/m² (C1) and 1.6 kg/m² (C2). Half of the concentration was used for the second cycle. Fifty-eight sweet potato plants were used in each plot. SS application boosted the agronomic parameters of biomass, productivity, and shoot biomass. Furthermore, improvements in soil properties were observed, mainly for pH, CEC, and NO₃-N, with no significant increase in heavy metals. For the edible parts, heavy metal concentrations decreased, and Pb was the only one that still exceeded the maximum limits. The results demonstrated that SS application to low-fertility soil is effective in improving the agronomic parameters of sweet potato and enhancing soil features. Further studies considering other variables, i.e., SS origin, soil properties, and the crop, must be carried out to propose custom applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios)

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18 pages, 24101 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Development of Retrotransposon-Based Molecular Markers for Characterization of Persea americana (Avocado) Cultivars and Horticultural Races

by Mario González Carracedo, Samuel Bello Alonso, Rahil Salomé Brito Cabrera, David Jiménez-Arias and José Antonio Pérez Pérez

Agronomy 2022, 12(7), 1510; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy12071510 - 23 Jun 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1576

Abstract

Persea americana (avocado) represents one of the most demanded food products worldwide, with an important impact in several agronomy-based economies. The avocado is one of the most salt-sensitive and valuable crops. It is therefore necessary to use salt-tolerant varieties, such as the West Indian, for cultivation in locations with soil salinity problems, such as the Canary Islands. Therefore, characterization of avocado cultivars is in demand, as well as development of molecular tools able to easily identify the main avocado cultivars and horticultural races. In the present work, inter-Primer Binding Site (iPBS) and Inter-Retrotransposon Amplified Polymorphism (IRAP) techniques, which are based on retrotransposon with Long Terminal Repeats (LTR), have been implemented for the first time in P. americana, allowing the characterization of genetic variation among cultivars from the three main horticultural races and the identification of potential P. americana LTR sequences. The iPBS approach showed clear advantages over its technical implementation, and allowed a better delimitation of horticultural races, especially when focused on West Indian cultivars. However, both techniques generated reproducible genetic fingerprints that not only allowed genetic characterization of each cultivar analyzed, but also revealed potential molecular markers for the identification of avocado cultivars and horticultural races. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios)

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20 pages, 9072 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Transcriptome Study of Rice Roots Status under High Alkaline Stress at Seedling Stage

by Yujie Lin, Jian Ma, Nan Wu, Fan Qi, Zhanwu Peng, Dandan Nie, Rongrong Yao, Xin Qi, Jan Slaski, Fu Yang, Ningning Wang and Jian Zhang

Agronomy 2022, 12(4), 925; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy12040925 - 12 Apr 2022

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2029

Abstract

Alkaline stress is harmful to plant growth and development, it would induce endogenic ionic concentration and osmotic pressure, trigger relevant genes expression with transcription factor binding, signal transduction and hormone synthesis. In this study, we selected “Dongdao-4”, a salt-alkali stress tolerance rice cultivar, which was subjected to extreme high pH (pH = 11.5) alkaline stress at the trefoil stage for 7 days. Using the RNA-seq technology, we analyzed variations in genes expressed between the fourth and the seventh day of treatment. The number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) was 3804, 2534, 207 and 3276 for fourth day-stress vs. fourth day-control, seventh day-stress vs. seventh day-control, seventh day-control vs. fourth day-control and seventh day-stress vs. fourth day-stress, respectively. Gene ontology (GO) results revealed that DEGs were mainly enriched in apoptotic process, electron carrier activity, receptor activity, molecular transducer activity. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) results implied that DEGs were mainly enriched in metabolic pathways, biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. In particular, DEGs were distributed in genes related to the transcription factor, leucine rich repeats (LRRs) and hormones. We also report here for the first-time identification of 125 genes specifically expressed during the alkaline stress. Our results provided important information assisting with the exploration of the molecular mechanisms of rice plants subjected to high pH condition and can facilitate rice abiotic tolerance breeding. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios)

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15 pages, 3077 KiB

Open AccessArticle

New Biostimulants Screening Method for Crop Seedlings under Water Deficit Stress

by David Jiménez-Arias, Sarai Morales-Sierra, Andrés A. Borges, Antonio J. Herrera and Juan C. Luis

Agronomy 2022, 12(3), 728; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy12030728 - 17 Mar 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2801

Abstract

Biostimulants can be used in many crops growing under water deficit conditions at the seedling stage. This study used tomato, Solanum lycopersicum L., seedlings growing in commercial 150-cell trays as an experimental setup to reproduce mild drought stress effects. The method showed significant reductions in seedling growth and RGR (25%) after a seven-day experiment. Gas exchange parameters (Pn, Gs and E) had significantly lower values (30–50%) than the control seedlings. Stress-related metabolite, ABA, exhibited a significant accumulation in the tomato seedlings (24 h), consistent with SINCED2 gene expression. Proline levels were twice as high in the water-deficit treated seedlings, remaining at this level until the end of the experiment. However, total carbohydrates were significantly lower in water-deficit treated seedlings. Qualitative and quantitative analysis suggested that using the variable ‘seedling biomass accumulation’ could simplify the methodology. Twelve different biostimulants were assayed, implementing this simplification, and all of them showed higher biomass accumulation in the treated seedlings than in the non-treated ones under water deficit. Among them, putrescine, spermine and spermidine were the most effective. The method is adjustable to different biostimulant volumes (1, 3 and 5 mL; 1 mM BABA), with no significant differences between the treatments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios)

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12 pages, 1360 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Applying Biostimulants to Combat Water Deficit in Crop Plants: Research and Debate

by David Jiménez-Arias, Alba E. Hernándiz, Sarai Morales-Sierra, Ana L. García-García, Francisco J. García-Machado, Juan C. Luis and Andrés A. Borges

Agronomy 2022, 12(3), 571; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy12030571 - 25 Feb 2022

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2858

Abstract

Climate change has increased the severity of drought episodes by further reducing precipitation in vulnerable zones. Drought induces a substantial decrease in agricultural water, reducing crop yields. Consequently, addressing water consumption can increase farmers’ profits. This work describes lab-to-field research in Zea mays, using two biostimulants: glycine betaine (GB) and L-pyroglutamic acid (PG). The biostimulant optimal dosages were selected using a hydroponic system with 20% polyethylene glycol and nursery experiments under water-deficit irrigation. The established dosages were evaluated in field trials in which irrigation was reduced by 20%. Laboratory biostimulant optimisation showed in stressed treated seedlings (GB 0.1 mM; PG 1 mM) an increased dry weight, relative growth rate and water use efficiency, reducing seedling growth loss between 65 and 85%, respectively. Field trials using a GB-optimised dosage showed an increase in plants’ growth, grain yield and flour Ca content. In addition, grain flour carbohydrate content and protein remained similar to control well-watered plants. Finally, the economic aspects of biostimulant treatments, water consumption, water sources (ground vs. desalinated) and grain biomass were addressed. Overall, GB treatment demonstrated to be a valuable tool to reduce water consumption and improve farmers’ earnings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios)

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Review

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12 pages, 959 KiB

Open AccessReview

Host-Defense Peptides as New Generation Phytosanitaries: Low Toxicity and Low Induction of Antimicrobial Resistance

by Fernando Lobo and Alicia Boto

Agronomy 2022, 12(7), 1614; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy12071614 - 05 Jul 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1688

Abstract

Host-defense peptides (HDP) are emerging as promising phytosanitaries due to their potency, low plant, animal and environmental toxicity, and above all, low induction of antimicrobial resistance. These natural compounds, which have been used by animals and plants over millions of years to defend themselves against pathogens, are being discovered by genome mining, and then produced using biofactories. Moreover, truncated or otherwise modified peptides, including ultra-short ones, have been developed to improve their bioactivities and biodistribution, and also to reduce production costs. The synergistic combination of HDP and other antimicrobials, and the development of hybrid molecules have also given promising results. Finally, although their low induction of antimicrobial resistance is a big advantage, cautionary measures for the sustainable use of HDPs, such as the use of precision agriculture tools, were discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Agriculture and Food Sustainability: New Climate Change Scenarios)

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