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Salinity is becoming a major threat to the growth of continuous rice crops in the low-elevation Vietnamese Mekong Delta. Seawater is increasingly permeating up the river and irrigation water distribution systems in the dry season. There is insufficient knowledge of possible alternatives to rice and management practices during this season to maintain crop production. We assessed the growth of beetroot and maize and tested the value of rice-straw mulch at four rates (0, 3.5, 7.0, and 10.5 t ha−1) at three sites over two years. At the two higher elevation locations (Lieu Tu and Long Phu, 0.80 and 0.96 m above mean sea level (amsl), respectively), dry season crops were successfully grown for 2 years and high levels of production were possible with beetroot and maize (average commercial crop yields up to 42 and 5.4 t ha−1, respectively) while crops could not be established at the low elevation site (Long My, 0.21 m amsl) due to inundation effects. For beetroot and maize, application of mulch increased commercial crop yields by up to 114% and 49%, respectively, decreased the concentrations of Na+ in the shoots of plants at harvest by 19% and 37%, respectively, and decreased the salinity (EC1:5) of the topsoil (0–15 cm) by 13%. Mulch effects were maximized at an application rate of 7.0 t ha−1. Analysis of relationships between soil salinities at different depths and yield and between mulch effects and yield suggested that the rooting depth of beetroot may have been constrained at these sites compared with maize. Very shallow water tables (~20 cm depth) were implicated as the likely cause of this constraint. In overview, our work suggests that exceptional yields of beetroot and maize are possible as alternative crops to rice in this delta environment where salinity and waterlogging are key risks.

In northwestern Vietnam, agroforestry is promoted to enhance environmental sustainability and support livelihoods, especially in resource-constrained situations. However, farmers adapt agroforestry in diverse ways, and there is still limited structured understanding of how differences in farm resources and configurations shape adoption patterns and support needs. Lack of knowledge about adoption patterns limits the design of cost-effective interventions. To fill this gap, we employed a participatory approach to develop a farm typology that links farm structure, agroforestry adoption patterns and group-specific constraints. Survey data from 101 households were analyzed using archetype analysis to identify distinct farm profiles. These profiles were validated through a series of farmer workshops to explore group-specific constraints and support needs. The archetype analysis identified three distinct agroforestry archetypes, each reflecting unique resource constraints. Archetype 1 and Archetype 2 both represent small-scale farmers with limited agricultural labor and diversified livelihood activities, but they differ in land configuration: Archetype 1 farmers manage more consolidated land and maintain high crop and tree diversity, whereas Archetype 2 farmers operate highly fragmented, small plots with limited potential to diversify. Archetype 3 farmers operate the largest farms among the three groups; they rely on annual crops and show the lowest agroforestry adoption level, with moderate species diversity in their agroforestry systems. Across archetypes, farmers emphasized needs for market access, as well as financial support for production inputs, tree seedlings and irrigation systems, system diversification and technical knowledge. Yet the rationale for these needs differed across groups. Our study is novel in combining data-driven archetype analysis with participatory validation to generate an action-oriented understanding of farm heterogeneity. The results show that support strategies should not only respond to common needs but also to the distinct constraints shaping agroforestry adoption across different farm contexts, highlighting the importance of context-specific, constraint-aware agroforestry policy and extension.

Amid the dual challenge of adapting to and mitigating climate change, greenhouse production is expanding. Greenhouse systems present promising avenues for sustainable intensification, yet their sustainability remains constrained by fertilization practices. Plant-based fertilizers like alfalfa meal represent a promising alternative to contentious organic fertilizers, but their ability to sustain productivity in highly intensive systems is uncertain. This study aimed to (i) compare ecosystem service provisioning between soil-based and soilless greenhouse systems and (ii) evaluate the potential of substituting a standard organic fertilization regime with alfalfa meal. In total, 11 indicators of ecosystem (dis)services associated with food production, climate/soil regulation, and air/water pollution were assessed over two crop cycles, grown under three fertilization regimes, where 0%, 50%, or 100% of N was supplied as alfalfa meal, alongside a control. The soilless system reduced disservices linked to N losses (N2O, NH3, and N leaching) but increased CH₄ emissions. Across systems, alfalfa meal decreased N losses while enhancing soil N and C pools, earthworm, bacterial, and fungal abundance. In the soil-based system, yields were largely unaffected by N substitution, reflecting strong reliance on soil N reserves, as indicated by the low fertilizer recovery (28.3%). In the soilless system, partial N substitution with alfalfa meal maintained yield, even though fertilizer recovery was high (75.3%). This work provides the first comparative study of soil-based and soilless greenhouse systems and the first report on alfalfa meal use in intensive greenhouse production. Total N losses were low (1.1–4.0% of applied N), well below values reported in previous studies, confirming that both cultivation methods can sustain high provisioning services while limiting disservices linked to N losses. Our findings also demonstrate that alfalfa meal is an effective N source, and future research should focus on refining its integration through whole-system approaches that balance trade-offs between ecosystem services.

Species mixtures are one of the levers for sustainable agriculture, as they can allow the reduction of environmental impacts while maintaining yields. Farmers face challenges in implementing them, however — notably technical difficulties and constraints related to cultivation and post-harvest sorting equipment. This study explores farmers’ agricultural equipment fleet management logics in the context of arable species mixture cultivation, a blind spot in the scientific literature. Our research methodology draws on the innovation tracking approach. Data were collected through interviews with 13 farmers cultivating species mixtures across France. We examined: (i) the characteristics and management of mixtures, as farmers consider them when selecting and using equipment, (ii) the technical features of the equipment used — including modifications and farmer-driven design, and (iii) farmers’ overall logic for managing their equipment fleets. The results reveal six categories of species mixtures, distinguished by their spatial arrangement and sowing depth, both closely linked to equipment use. Farmers use a wide diversity of equipment, often modified or repurposed to suit specific mixtures, such as seed drills adapted to sow different species at distinct depths. Three main management logics were identified among the interviewees: (i) minimizing costs through existing equipment reuse, (ii) adapting equipment to the biological characteristics of species mixtures, and (iii) making equipment choices based on local resources. Here we demonstrate how the management of agricultural equipment is a central lever for species mixture cultivation. This study offers new insights into equipment for agroecological farming practices, providing reflexive guidance for researchers, advisers, and equipment manufacturers involved in the transition toward more sustainable agriculture.

Climate change amplifies extreme weather events, posing critical risks to South African agriculture, where rainfed farming and climatic variability heighten vulnerability. Maize, the country’s staple crop, is sensitive to compounded hazards. However, current risk assessments largely consider hazards in isolation and often fail to capture their interactions across time, space, and crop development stages, limiting their usefulness for decision-making. Therefore, this paper presents a novel risk-scoring system within a multi-hazard assessment framework applied to South African maize production. This system integrates irrigation-defined clusters, climatic indices, and crop-stage-specific dynamics. Climatic hazards—including droughts, heatwaves, cold spells, heavy rainfall, diseases, and frost—were profiled, and risk scores calculated from their correlations with yield. Statistical models, linking spatio-temporal yield variability to multi-hazard risk scores, captured how hazard interactions compound across regions, irrigation levels, and phenological stages. Results show that yield losses are not driven by the number of hazards occurring each year, but by specific hazard interactions across phenological stages. Yield gaps between rainfed and moderately irrigated systems narrow from 41% at a risk score of 0 (lowest) to 9% at 8 (highest), suggesting that moderate irrigation cannot fully mitigate high risks. Yield gaps between rainfed and highly irrigated systems widen from 47% to 71%, indicating greater stability under higher risk conditions. Normalized average risk scores (0–1) were lower in highly irrigated systems (0.13–0.14), moderate in moderately irrigated systems (0.23–0.36), and highly variable in rainfed systems (0.00–0.90). In rainfed systems, all hazard profiles negatively impact yields, with the drought-heatwave combination presenting the highest risks. While irrigation reduces drought stress, it can also amplify challenges under combined heat and high-moisture conditions by promoting waterlogging and disease outbreaks. These findings identify the most critical hazard interactions, across irrigation levels and growth stages, supporting more targeted and context-specific risk management strategies.

Soil health is central to agroecological transitions, yet guidance for integrating it into agri-food system design and monitoring remains fragmented. Institutions increasingly use frameworks to define indicators, guide interventions, and report progress against climate, biodiversity, and food-security agendas. However, to our knowledge, there is no integrative soil health framework which coherently links biophysical diagnostics, socio-institutional enablers, and multiscale accountability. This leaves critical gaps in design, sequencing, and measurement of agroecological transitions. Here we review how soil health is operationalized within agroecology and agri-food systems and translate these patterns into an actionable programming guide. We reviewed 64 frameworks and extracted 652 indicators across 12 agroecological principles to build a framework-by-principle evidence matrix. Frameworks were classified by use-orientation (theory, practice, analysis), and indicator thematic profiles were analyzed using hierarchical clustering with adaptive branch detection. The major findings are as follows: (1) framework evolution exhibits four chronological waves with shifts from conceptual foundations to operational measurement and outcome reporting, alongside changes in global and regional agenda setting and a rising demand for comparable indicators; (2) clustering identified five soil health design domains separating biophysical and socio-economic principles and revealing stable micro-constellations beyond earlier pathway framing. These include soil management and input stewardship, soil-health assessment, agroecological and ecosystem-based, integrated landscape and livelihood, and policy- and outcome-based. These findings were translated into a sequenced, multi-domain programming architecture that operationalizes complementarity across diagnostics, stewardship implementation, ecosystem safeguards, landscape–livelihood embedding, and iterative learning, thereby closing the gaps between farm practices, governance mechanisms, and outcome monitoring for soil health.

Rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa is intensifying pressure on food security and reinforcing the need for sustainable agricultural intensification. Maize–bean intercropping presents an opportunity to enhance and stabilize crop productivity in this region. Row intercropping—an arrangement in which two or more crops are planted in intentional row patterns—has been promoted as an efficient alternative to sole crops and traditional mixed intercropping. Yet, evidence of its performance across diverse soils and climates remains limited. This study evaluates the multicriteria performance of maize–bean row intercropping compared with sole cropping and mixed intercropping under contrasting farm conditions. We conducted a large-scale, multiseason on-farm study with 382 trials across a wide range of environments in Rwanda. A novel aspect of this study is to move beyond yield-focused intercropping assessments by jointly considering productivity, nutritional outcomes, labor requirements, economic returns, and farmers’ preferences, while uniquely monitoring application rates 4 years after the trials. These dimensions were assessed across a wide range of soil, climate, and socioeconomic farm conditions. Overall, row intercropping had better land use efficiency and higher energy yield and profitability than sole and mixed intercropping systems. It achieved higher land use efficiency in less favorable environments, while its yield stability was comparable to the other cropping systems tested. However, its higher labor requirements, especially at planting, when labor demand peaks, led to only moderate farmer preference. Four years after the trials, application remained limited, with only 30% of participating farmers continuing to use row intercropping despite its higher yields. To enhance adoption, we recommend developing flexible guidelines that allow farmers to adapt practices to their specific needs, introducing labor-saving innovations to reduce the workload at planting, and targeting dissemination to fields with biophysical conditions where row intercropping is expected to deliver the strongest performance.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, important soil phosphorus mobilizers in natural systems, become gradually impoverished by high fertilization and tillage in conventional agricultural systems. The effects of management practices on their capacity to transfer phosphorus to crops have however not been directly measured under field conditions and their contribution to crop nutrition when management changes remain unknown. We compared the specific contribution of native arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to P uptake of oats under long-term conservation agriculture or conventional tillage and explored whether 19 years of conservation agriculture had improved their P transfer capacity to oat plants. We expected that preserved mycorrhizal communities and hyphal networks under conservation agriculture increased the transfer of labeled P from a confined location in the soil to oat shoots. Local soil labeled with 33P was buried between rows in mesh bags that excluded roots or allowed roots and mycelium. Plant and mycorrhizal development, and 33P transfer to shoots, were followed in mesh bags and shoots from seedling to grain filling stage. 33P transferred to shoots and root-length specific 33P uptake were significantly higher in the conservation agriculture than in the conventional tillage treatment. 33P transfer by conventional tillage roots was similar to transfer by non-mycorrhizal roots. 33P transfer to oats plants was positively related to root length and root colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Our results provide evidence of higher P transfer capacity of mycorrhizal oat roots when native arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi communities and their networks were preserved through long-term conservation agriculture. This is one of the few studies showing the otherwise hidden specific contribution of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to crop P nutrition under realistic field conditions and the first to document the improvement in 33P transfer when oat roots were colonized by local fungi from the soil under long-term reduced disturbance by tillage.

Enhancing soil phosphorus (P) availability is crucial for the sustainable utilization of nonrenewable P fertilizer resources. Straw return was found to influence soil P availability; however, its magnitude and governing factors across large geographical areas remain largely uncertain. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a global meta-analysis of 477 field experiments from 181 sites worldwide. We showed that straw return significantly enhanced soil available P and crop P-uptake by 12.8% and 15.0%, respectively. Soil pH was identified as the most important factor. With increasing soil pH, both response indices decreased in acidic soils, whereas they increased in alkaline soils. This concave relationship was attributed to the fact that straw return increases pH in acidic soils but decreases it in alkaline soils. Our study presents the first integrative assessment of straw return-induced enhancement in soil P availability at a global scale, providing new insights into the sustainable utilization of crop straw and P fertilizer resources.

Crop rotations constitute a crucial way of managing farms. Scientific methods have studied rotations through different approaches. These either focus on the design of rotations, the performance of individual rotations (from a productivity, environmental performance, and/or soil recovery point of view), or the spatial pattern in the landscape. Despite these approaches, there is no method available to investigate the sustainability of a rotation at a large scale based on consistently followed agronomic principles in everyday farming practices. The novel Crop Rotation Index is proposed to fill this gap. To compute the Crop Rotation Index on a parcel basis, a sequence of crops over 6 years is evaluated by 8 indicators, where crops in the sequence are grouped together based on botanical families. These indicators represent, e.g., the frequency of crop categories in a rotation and the number of years between crops from the same category. The Crop Rotation Index was computed for the Netherlands using the parcel registry data. Results are presented at various spatial and temporal scales. Dutch arable regions in the south west and north east have an average value between 0.1 and 0.3, while grass-based systems in the center and north west have a value between 0.9 and 1.0. The results for the Province of Drenthe show that the western part is gradually becoming more intensive in arable crops, with values decreasing from 0.42 to 0.37 over a period of 5 years. A farm level case study on parcel sharing demonstrates that the Crop Rotation Index can capture complex land-sharing arrangements. The current version of the Crop Rotation Index can be extended with new indicators and crop categories and be applied in other regions. It is available as an indicator for performance monitoring in agriculture, supporting farmers in crop decisions, and as part rotation generation tools.