Without transformative adaptation strategies, the impact of climate change is projected to reduce global crop yields and increase food insecurity, while rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions further exacerbate the crisis. While agriculture is a major contributor to climate change through unsustainable practices, it also offers significant opportunities to mitigate these emissions through the adoption of sustainable practices. This review examines climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as a key strategy for enhancing crop productivity, building climate resilience, and reducing GHG emissions, while emphasizing the need for strategic interventions to accelerate its large-scale implementation for improved food security. The analysis revealed that while nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) has improved in developed countries, the global NUE remains at 55.47%, emphasizing the need for precision nutrient management and integrated soil fertility strategies to enhance productivity and minimize environmental impacts. With 40% of the world’s agricultural land already degraded, sustainability alone is insufficient, necessitating a shift toward regenerative agricultural practices to restore degraded soil and water by improving soil health, enhancing biodiversity, and increasing carbon sequestration, thus ensuring long-term agricultural resilience. CSA practices, including precision agriculture, regenerative agriculture, biochar application, and agroforestry, improve soil health, enhance food security, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. However, result variability highlights the need for site-specific strategies to optimize benefits. Integrating multiple CSA practices enhances soil health and productivity more effectively than implementing a single practice alone. Widespread adoption faces socio-economic and technological barriers, requiring supportive policies, financial incentives, and capacity-building initiatives. By adopting climate-smart technologies, agriculture can transition toward sustainability, securing global food systems while addressing climate challenges.

In the rhizosphere, the activities within all processes and functions are primarily influenced by plant roots, microorganisms present in the rhizosphere, and the interactions between roots and microorganisms. The rhizosphere, a dynamic zone surrounding the roots, provides an ideal environment for a diverse microbial community, which significantly shapes plant growth and development. Microbial activity in the rhizosphere can promote plant growth by increasing nutrient availability, influencing plant hormonal signaling, and repelling or outcompeting pathogenic microbial strains. Understanding the associations between plant roots and soil microorganisms has the potential to revolutionize crop yields, improve productivity, minimize reliance on chemical fertilizers, and promote sustainable plant growth technologies. The rhizosphere microbiome could play a vital role in the next green revolution and contribute to sustainable and eco-friendly agriculture. However, there are still knowledge gaps concerning plant root-environment interactions, particularly regarding roots and microorganisms. Advances in metabolomics have helped to understand the chemical communication between plants and soil biota, yet challenges persist. This article provides an overview of the latest advancements in comprehending the communication and interplay between plant roots and microbes, which have been shown to impact crucial factors such as plant growth, gene expression, nutrient absorption, pest and disease resistance, and the alleviation of abiotic stress. By improving these aspects, sustainable agriculture practices can be implemented to increase the overall productivity of plant ecosystems.

One of the most significant constraints on agricultural productivity is the low availability of iron (Fe) in soil, which is directly related to biological, physical, and chemical activities in the rhizosphere. The rhizosphere has a high iron requirement due to plant absorption and microorganism density. Plant roots and microbes in the rhizosphere play a significant role in promoting plant iron (Fe) uptake, which impacts plant development and physiology by influencing nutritional, biochemical, and soil components. The concentration of iron accessible to these live organisms in most cultivated soil is quite low due to its solubility being limited by stable oxyhydroxide, hydroxide, and oxides. The dissolution and solubility rates of iron are also significantly affected by soil pH, microbial population, organic matter content, redox processes, and particle size of the soil. In Fe-limiting situations, plants and soil microbes have used active strategies such as acidification, chelation, and reduction, which have an important role to play in enhancing soil iron availability to plants. In response to iron deficiency, plant and soil organisms produce organic (carbohydrates, amino acids, organic acids, phytosiderophores, microbial siderophores, and phenolics) and inorganic (protons) chemicals in the rhizosphere to improve the solubility of poorly accessible Fe pools. The investigation of iron-mediated associations among plants and microorganisms influences plant development and health, providing a distinctive prospect to further our understanding of rhizosphere ecology and iron dynamics. This review clarifies current knowledge of the intricate dynamics of iron with the end goal of presenting an overview of the rhizosphere mechanisms that are involved in the uptake of iron by plants and microorganisms.

Healthy soil is essential for life on Earth, valued for its ability to sustain productivity, provide ecosystem services, support biodiversity, socioeconomic structure, food security, and promote environmental health. However, climate-induced changes, such as extreme weather events, shifting precipitation patterns, and rising temperatures, can disrupt essential soil processes. Climate change, combined with unsustainable soil management practices, can accelerate soil degradation, loss soil organic matter, reduce soil moisture retention, intensify erosion, disrupt nutrient cycling, and increase greenhouse gas emission. An increase in temperature of 1 °C is estimated to increase pest incidence by 10-25 % and reduce major crop yields by up to 7.4 %. Enhancing soil health strengthens plant resilience, suppresses disease development, and safeguards agroecosystems against the adverse effects of climate extremes. The growing recognition of the central role of soil in both agricultural and environmental sustainability has therefore driven interest in holistic strategies that integrate advanced agronomic practices, innovative technologies, and enabling policy frameworks to sustainably manage and restore soil health. This review examines recent advances in soil management strategies, highlighting the integration of interdisciplinary approaches to strengthen soil health as a basis for climate change resilience and increased crop productivity. Our synthesis emphasizes the importance of tailoring agricultural management practices such as soil amendments, diverse cropping systems, beneficial microbes, conservation agriculture, precision agriculture, and innovative technologies to specific soil and environmental contexts. By adopting these strategies through an interdisciplinary approach, we can improve soil productivity, sustain agroecosystem functions, and mitigate negative environmental impacts, ensuring the capacity of soil to meet the demands of a changing world.

Agriculture is undergoing a paradigm shift as it moves away from relying only on agrochemicals toward natural-based product to enhance plant growth and productivity while sustainably maintaining soil quality and productivity. In this sense, microalgae and bacteria offer a unique potential due to the growing use of novel and eco-friendly products such as biofertilizers, biostimulants, and biopesticides. Microalgae improve crop growth and health by fixing nitrogen, releasing soil trace elements, solubilizing potassium, and phosphorus, producing exopolysaccharides, and converting organic matter into utilizable nutrients. They also release bioactive substances including, carbohydrates, proteins, enzymes, vitamins, and hormones, to promote plant growth, control pests, and mitigate plant stress responses. Even though it has long been known that microalgae produce various bioactive and signaling molecules (like phytohormones, polysaccharides, lipids, carotenoids, phycobilins, and amino acids) which are effective in crop production, the targeted applications of these molecules in plant science are still in the very early stages of development. Microalgae are beneficial to bacteria because they produce oxygen and extracellular chemicals, and bacteria, in turn, provide microalgae with carbon dioxide, vitamins, and other nutrients in exchange. This review discusses the possible role of microalgae in increasing crop yield, protecting crops, and maintaining soil fertility and stability, and it points out that interactions of microalgae and bacteria may have a better enhancement of crop production in a sustainable way than using either of them alone.

To achieve food security and increase crop productivity in a sustainable way, keeping soil fertile and balanced fertilization is vital. Soil fertility declining and unbalanced fertilization is one of the bottlenecks to sustainable agricultural production. To overcome these problems, a field experiment was investigated, with the aim of exploring the potential of organic and inorganic nutrient sources with their optimal application and integration for sustainable wheat production. The experiment was conducted in a factorial approach with three replications, where one factor was the level of the NP (Nitrogen and Phosphorus) fertilizer and the other compost, set in a randomized complete block design. Four levels of the N:P fertilizer (control, 27.6%:18.4%, 41.4%:32.2% and 55.2%:46%) were combined with three levels of compost (0, 3 ton/ha and 6 ton/ha), giving 12 treatments combination. From the data collected and analyzed, integrated application of the NP fertilizer and compost significantly increased soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, and available phosphorus but had no effect on soil pH and cation exchange capacity (CEC). Application of 6 ton/ha compost was higher with plant height, spike length, number of seeds per spike, 1000 seeds weight, and biological yield. The sole application of the NP (55.2%:46%) produced (6.19 ton/ha) grain yield whereas combined application of the NP (55.2%:46%) along with the compost (6 ton/ha) produced the higher grain yield (8.16 ton/ha). This clearly revealed that application of 75% recommended inorganic NP fertilizers combined with compost resulted in increased wheat yield by 27.45% over sole application of inorganic fertilizer indicated that the integrated approach could enable to save up to 25% of commercial fertilizers and increase the yield of wheat.