Toward Advanced, Intensive, and Precision Cropping Systems: Frontiers in Cultivation Strategies for Regulating Crop Physiology and Ecology

Global agriculture stands at a critical juncture, facing the dual imperative of ensuring food security and quality amidst intensifying climate change and escalating resource constraints. Traditional high-input agricultural practices are facing increasing challenges to their long-term sustainability, highlighting the critical need for a fundamental re-evaluation and potential paradigm shift. Achieving future breakthroughs will critically rely on a profound mechanistic understanding of crop systems and their precise regulation. To achieve synergistic benefits—encompassing yield enhancement, quality improvement, and efficient resource use—research must transcend isolated agronomic practices, moving towards a holistic, systems-level understanding of crop-environment-management interactions.Integrating frontier theories and cutting-edge technological innovations, this Research Topic aims to elucidate the intricate mechanisms by which advanced, intensive, and precision cultivation strategies regulate crop physiological processes and ecological adaptability. This mechanistic understanding is crucial for establishing a robust theoretical foundation and a novel framework to develop next-generation crop production systems, characterized by high yield potential, exceptional efficiency, and robust resilience.This Research Topic advocates for advancing crop cultivation science beyond mere phenomenological descriptions, embracing a paradigm of systematic exploration and design. We emphasize uncovering the sophisticated regulatory mechanisms employed by integrated cultivation strategies, elucidating their impact on critical physiological processes (such as resource acquisition, source-sink dynamics, and stress response) and their influence on ecological interactions within the rhizosphere and broader agroecosystems. To facilitate this profound mechanistic understanding and inform the innovative design of resilient crop production systems, we strongly encourage interdisciplinary approaches, integrating cutting-edge methodologies such as multi-omics, advanced physiological sensing, high-throughput phenotyping, and process modeling.We invite original research and comprehensive review articles exploring recent mechanistic advances in advanced, intensive, and precision cultivation strategies, specifically focusing on (but not limited to) the following areas:1) Physiological and molecular mechanisms by which advanced cultivation strategies synergistically enhance yield and quality, including the regulation of assimilate transport to reproductive organs and the modulation of source–sink relationships;2) Root–soil feedback mechanisms by which intensive cultivation strategies enhance resource acquisition efficiency, including the root architecture remodeling and rhizosphere microenvironment evolution;3) Target Identification and multi-level network construction for precision cultivation strategies in improving yield and stress tolerance;4) Integration of physiological processes with intelligent diagnostic and decision-making algorithms, powered by multi-source data from remote sensing, IoT, and phenomics, enables advanced, intensive, and precise cultivation strategies. Topic editors: Wanrong Gu, Pengfei Zhang, Eevera Tamilmani Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77065/toward-advanced-intensive-and-precision-cropping-systems-frontiers-in-cultivation-strategies-for-regulating-crop-physiology-and-ecology