Dear Colleagues,

Vegetables are an excellent source of several essential micronutrients and health-related phytochemicals. Producing vegetables promotes agribusiness, which in turn generates employment and commercial prospects. Vegetable production nearly always involves soil tillage, which requires rotating the top soil layer after each crop cycle to incorporate organic wastes, soil correctives, and typically large amounts of mineral fertilizers. Our production system is at a critical stage, which can meet consumers' needs for affordable food while improving sustainability. The current intensive crop production practices can maximize production, thereby creating an unstable, fragile, and unsustainable production system. For instance, certain systems are hastening the soil's physical, chemical, and biological degradation, jeopardizing its quality and sustainability due to heavy applications of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, frequently resulting in food contamination and groundwater pollution and causing soil erosion. The soil characteristics are improved by crop cultivation methods that maintain the soil covered by cover crops (or their residues) and only mobilize the soil at the planting line or the site of the seedling transplant. Such outcomes enhance the soil's health and quality for vegetable farming.

We encourage well-written articles on vegetable production systems, both theoretical and practical. For research papers, all experimental and methodological details must be provided.

So, research articles, reviews and studies in this area of study are welcome. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Adil Mihoub

Section editor