Coupling Field Water Management with Soil Conservation and Nutrient Strategies to Sustain Crop Productivity under Drought, Salinity, and Soil Degradation

Field water management sits at the heart of agricultural resilience. In an era of intensifying drought, expanding salinization, and progressive soil degradation, the volume and timing of water reaching the root zone, together with how that water interacts with soil structure and nutrient supply, increasingly determine whether crops fail or thrive. Yet water management is rarely the limiting factor in isolation. Compacted or organic-matter-depleted soils waste irrigation through poor infiltration and percolation; saline irrigation water amplifies osmotic stress; mismatched fertilization undermines the gains of water-saving schedules. Underpinning these field-scale dynamics, soil biological activity - microbial communities, enzyme function, and microbially mediated nutrient cycling -modulates how water and nutrients move through the rhizosphere, making the biological dimension of the soil–water–nutrient interface inseparable from its physical and chemical management. These coupled constraints are most severe in water-scarce regions and smallholder systems, where infrastructure is limited and every cubic meter of water must work harder.This Research Topic seeks to advance integrated, field-scale solutions that couple water management with soil conservation and nutrient strategies to maintain crop productivity under drought, salinity, and degraded-soil conditions. We welcome work that moves beyond single-lever optimization (irrigation scheduling alone, or fertilization alone) to evidence-based agronomic packages that explicitly account for the soil–water–nutrient interface, including the soil biological processes that mediate it. Recent advances in deficit and water-saving irrigation, fertigation, conservation tillage, organic and mineral soil amendments (biochar, lignin-based supplements, compost), and brackish or non-conventional water reuse offer practical levers to improve infiltration, reduce evaporative loss, protect soil structure, and stabilize nutrient availability when water is scarce or of poor quality. We particularly welcome field-based studies grounded in real cropping systems, including smallholder and rainfed-supplementary contexts in Africa and Asia, that link these interventions to measurable outcomes: yield stability, water and nutrient use efficiency, soil organic carbon, salt leaching dynamics, microbial and biogeochemical responses, and farm-level economic viability.We welcome works on the following themes, but not limited to:• Deficit irrigation, alternate wetting–drying, and water-saving irrigation strategies and their effects on crop water and nutrient use efficiency• Coupled water–nutrient management (fertigation, split fertilization timed to irrigation events) under limited or variable water supply• Soil amendments (biochar, lignin-based products, compost, and organic mulches) as tools to improve infiltration, water retention, and nutrient buffering in irrigated and rainfed fields• Conservation tillage, cover cropping, and residue management practices that protect soil structure and reduce irrigation losses• Soil biological responses - microbial communities, enzyme activity, and microbially driven nutrient cycling - to irrigation regimes, biochar / organic amendments, and conservation tillage, and how these responses mediate water–nutrient use efficiency under stress• Field water management strategies for saline and brackish water reuse, including leaching design and amendment-supported salinity mitigation• Smallholder and water-scarce irrigation systems: performance assessment, on-farm adaptation, and pathways to scaling• Long-term field evidence linking integrated water–soil–nutrient interventions to yield stability, soil health, and farm-level economics.Contributions advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on Zero Hunger, Clean Water, and Life on Land are especially encouraged. Topic editors: Evans Asenso, Yousef Alhaj Hamoud Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82083/coupling-field-water-management-with-soil-conservation-and-nutrient-strategies-to-sustain-crop-productivity-under-drought-salinity-and-soil-degradation