Editorial: Options for transition of land towards intensive and sustainable agricultural systems, volume II

Among the main challenges for the 21st century, the need to feed a global population expected to grow over nine billion by 2050 is of utmost importance. At the same time, the role of agriculture as a source of bioenergy and renewable raw material poses new challenges to the limited croplands, available. Furthermore, a change in paradigm is needed since the increase of food and biomass production must be obtained with a limited environmental impact, by protecting natural resources such as soil and water, safeguarding biodiversity and mitigating the climate change (FAO, 2023). This Research Topic gathers five contributions highlighting novel strategies and genetic materials to improve agriculture productivity on a sustainable basis. The approaches include Organic Farming, designed to produce high-quality food by keeping at the minimum inputs of resources such as water, energy, fertilizers and pesticides. This is obtained by using fertilizers of organic origin such as animal Manure and by exploiting Crop Rotation to regenerate soil nutrients and microbial diversity (Schröder et al., 2019). Moreover, Artificial ecological corridors, proved to restore ecological environment (Wei et al., 2023), are taken into considerations to understand their long-term impact on restoring soil properties and functions. Finally, the increase of agriculture productivity also requires Novel breeding techniques and genetic materials enabling better adaptation of crops to climate change (Anand et al., 2023).