Plant and Soil - Call for Papers: Special Issue on “Exploring the plant and soil mechanisms by which crop rotations benefit farming systems”
Plant and Soil is seeking submissions for a Special Issue on “Exploring the plant and soil mechanisms by which crop rotations benefit farming systems” guest edited by Imran Malik, Richard Bell, Huadong Zang, Gustavo Boitt and Richard Whalley.
Submissions close 30 September 2023.
Special issue papers accepted for publication in the special issue will be available online very soon after acceptance, and before inclusion in the special issue. All manuscripts will be peer-reviewed by 2-3 independent reviewers and handled by the Guest Editors, in collaboration with the Journal’s Section Editors.
Crop rotation, a system of growing different kinds of crops (and pastures) in recurrent succession on the same land, is recognized for its benefits for long-term soil and farm management. The benefits attributed to crop rotations are: building soil fertility (i.e., nutrient recycling from sub soils, nutrient turnover from crop residue including roots); preserving the environment (i.e., maintain soil microbial diversity, use of residual moisture, improve soil hydrological properties); breaking weed, pest & disease transmission cycles. Crop rotation also increases the resilience of farm income to the shocks caused by natural disasters like unseasonal and extreme precipitation (i.e., too much or too little). Furthermore, rotational cropping systems involving legumes and cereals are regarded as a more sustainable system for increasing food production. Thus, the topic will appeal to researchers from agronomy, soil science and agroforestry who are transforming and improving rotational cropping systems. Impressive progress has been made in the field adoption of crop rotations; the present Special Issue will focus on uncovering the plant and soil mechanisms by which crop rotations benefit farming systems.
Specific themes of the Special Issue include but are not limited to:
1. Nutrient cycling (i.e., nutrient recycling from subsoils, nutrient turnover from crop residue including roots)
2. Root foraging, rhizosphere modification and biopore formation
3. Breaking weed, pest & disease transmission cycles
4. Soil microbial community structure including disease suppression
5. Allelopathy
6. Crop rotations in Conservation Agriculture Soil carbon sequestration
Important Submission Information
To submit a manuscript for this special issue, authors should follow the steps below:
1. Authors submit their paper through the following website http://plso.edmgr.com/ (this opens in a new tab)
2. In the “Article Type Selection” step of the online submission procedure, authors must choose “Special Issue S112 – Crop rotations” from the dropdown box.
3. In the General Information step, authors must specify their Article Category.
4. In the Comments step, authors must include the following information: Special Issue S112 – Crop rotations / Article Category (please indicate whether Research Article, Review, Methods Paper or Opinion Paper
Contact
If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact Guest Editors Imran Malik (imran.malik@uwa.edu.au (this opens in a new tab)), Editor in Chief Hans Lambers (hans.lambers@uwa.edu.au (this opens in a new tab) ) or Managing Editor Lieve Bultynck (plso-plants@uwa.edu.au (this opens in a new tab) ).