About this Research Topic

Background

With the intensification of the global shortage of freshwater resources, the shortage of agricultural water resources is becoming more serious, threatening global food security, water security, and ecological environment security. On the other hand, a vast number of unconventional water resources in the world have not been efficiently utilized, resulting in resource waste and environmental damage, leading to the demand for the safe use of unconventional water resources. The quality of unconventional water is very complex. It contains not only many nutrients required for crop growth but also pathogenic microorganisms, heavy metals, salt, and other crop-harming components. If not utilized scientifically, it will support the normal physiological growth of crops while affecting crop quality, the safety of the ecological environment, and human health.

Therefore, aiming to solve the problem of microbial pollution and potential hazards in the process of unconventional water irrigation, this research topic focuses on the impact of harmful microorganisms in unconventional water on crop growth as well as the soil and groundwater environment. We hope to make new discoveries in the microbial community characteristics and mechanisms of distribution, migration, enrichment, biological and biochemical interactions (including microbe response to heavy metal, salt, etc.), and impact on crop quality.

This research topic welcomes Original Research articles, Reviews and Mini-reviews, Opinions, Perspectives, Hypotheses & Theories, Methods, Technology and Code to provide new findings about the harm or potential harm of microorganisms to the soil-crop-groundwater system in unconventional water irrigation around the world. Sub-topics include but are not limited to the following aspects:

- Distribution, enrichment, and dynamic change of microbial community in different soil profiles
- Enrichment and migration mechanism of the microbial community in the rhizosphere, non-rhizosphere and various parts of the plant
- Interaction mechanism between microbial community and other harmful pollutants
- Microbiological detection methods and water quality assessment in groundwater
- Functional genes, functional groups, and functional diversity in driving microbiogenic element cycles
- Mathematical modeling in the soil-plant-groundwater system

Important: Environmental genomics studies and community compositional analyses should use the most recent analytical pipelines and databases, and be accompanied by environmental contextual data. In most cases, descriptive studies of microbial community structures will not be considered.

Keywords: Regenerated water, brackish water, crops, soil, soil microbial species, soil microbial community, soil microbial detection, soil microbial group, soil microbial biomass carbon, heavy metal

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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