Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science

Soil Health and Sustainable Agriculture

There is a growing awareness of soil as a vital resource for humanity and all living organisms. Along with this, there is an increase in people's awareness of the role of soil in the environment and in plant growth, as well as its functions and related threats. In this context, two seemingly conflicting challenges facing agriculture arise: improving food production to satisfy the growing demand and promoting environmental sustainability. Therefore, agriculture should prioritize meeting human needs by using non-renewable resources as efficiently as possible. It seems truly inevitable that handling and solving these two challenges is necessary because agriculture is recognized as a major environmental threat due to its effects on climate change and biodiversity loss. This increased awareness of the role of soil has led to the adoption of legislative measures in various parts of the world and the definition of soil protection strategies that are as effective as possible, with the aim of exploiting the benefits of healthy soils for people, food, nature, and the climate.

In the context just described, the goals of farmers and governments can only be to maintain agroecosystems in a healthy state, make them more resilient to global change, and enable them to provide as many soil ecosystem services as possible. These objectives can be fulfilled through major changes in agricultural practices and support policies.

However, the state of soil health and its relationship to agricultural practices should be defined or measured in some way.

In the literature, different definitions of soil health and soil quality can be found, but the problem is not adopting one definition or another. A quantitative assessment in different climatic and soil conditions is necessary. There is rich research on soil quality, or sometimes soil health, but further research is required to develop operational measurement methodologies through quantitative indicators. It is also necessary to clarify in research objectives that soil health and soil quality are not synonymous. Soil quality refers to a specific function or crop, while soil health has a broader and more general meaning concerning the overall state of the soil.

All article types consistent with the Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science author guidelines are welcome. Among the non-exclusive topics that would fit within the collection are the following:

• Agricultural systems and soil health
• Cover crops and soil health
• Agricultural practices and soil health
• Indicators of soil health
• Spatial and temporal data for assessing soil health
• Soil health and related soil ecosystem services

Keywords: Soil Health, Soil Management Systems, Indicators, Agricultural Practices, Soil Functions and Services

Guest Advisors

Dr. Gabriele Buttafuoco, PhD, is a Research Director in the National Research Council of Italy. His research focuses mainly on modelling soil properties and processes varying over different scales in space and time for different purposes related to agriculture, soil hydrology, soil threats, and ecosystem services by using methods of geostatistics, digital soil mapping for spatial prediction and uncertainty assessment, soil sampling designs and strategies, mixed effects model theory, soil diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, gamma ray spectroscopy, remote sensing, geophysical methods, and sensor data fusion. He is a member of the International Union of Soil Science, the Italian Soil Science Society, and the European Water Resources Association. Here is the link to his ORCID page: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0280-8658.

Prof. Simona Vingiani, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Pedology in the Enological Sciences Master's Degree program at the University of Naples Federico II. She applied her expertise in soil science to national and international projects focused on soil degradation processes (i.e., soil contamination and landslides), food traceability, grape quality in a changing climate, and soil health. Her work included soil spatial variability assessment by proximal sensors, pedogenetic analysis, soil clay mineralogy, soil micromorphology, and grape and wine analyses. Here is the link to her ORCID page: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3543-8438.

Disclosure statement: Both Guest Advisors declare no conflict of interest.

­­All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is September 30th, 2026.

Please contact Ruby Ru at [email protected] with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

To submit your papers to this Article Collection, please:

1. Check "yes" for the question, "Are you submitting your paper for a specific special issue or article collection?"
2. Select the relevant Article Collection from the drop-down menu under the question, "Special Issue or Article Collection Name."