Intercropping is an eco-friendly, sustainable agricultural model that significantly improves yield stability, nutrient use efficiency, and soil health through spatiotemporal niche complementarity, increases biodiversity, and improves soil health. Water and nitrogen play crucial roles in limiting and regulating efficient resource utilization and ecological sustainability in intercropping systems. Synchronizing water and nitrogen inputs to match crop demands optimizes the spatiotemporal distribution of these resources, alleviates interspecific competition, and promotes mutualistic interactions, which significantly impacts crop growth, yield, and soil environment. This paper reviews the mechanisms of intercropping and water–nitrogen coupling regulation, aligning water and nitrogen supply with crop growth patterns, spatial configuration parameters, irrigation management techniques, and environmental climate change, and explores the response mechanisms of water–nitrogen coupling on crop growth, yield, and soil environmental adaptation. It can provide some references for researchers, extension agents, and policymakers. Research indicates that water–nitrogen coupling can enhance photosynthetic efficiency, promote root development, optimize nutrient uptake, and improve soil water dynamics, nitrogen cycling, and microbial community structures. Intercropping enhances the climate resilience of agricultural systems by leveraging species complementarity for resource utilization, strengthening ecosystem stability, and improving buffering capacity against climate change impacts such as extreme precipitation and temperature fluctuations. Future studies should further elucidate the differential effect of water–nitrogen coupling across regions and climatic conditions, focusing on multidimensional integrated administration strategies. Combining precision agriculture technologies and climate change predictions facilitates the development of more adaptive water–nitrogen coupling models to provide theoretical support and technical guarantees for sustainable agriculture.

The long-term widespread application of atrazine poses significant threats to the eco-environment and human health. To investigate the potential of vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides L.) for phytoremediation of the environmental media contaminated by atrazine, an indoor incubation experiment was conducted in submerged soil over 30 days. Results showed that the chlorophyll level of the vetiver was not significantly affected by exposure to atrazine. Vetiver could take up and accumulate atrazine from submerged soil and peaked around the 20th day with a concentration of 1.0 mg kg⁻¹ in leaf. The metabolites Hydroxyatrazine (HA), deethylatrazine (DEA), Deisopropylatrazine (DIA), and didealkylatrazine (DDA) were detected in the leaf on the 30th day, indicating vetiver could degrade atrazine inside the leaf tissue. The atrazine removal rate in the vetiver planted and unplanted jars were 69.72 and 60.29%, respectively, indicating that 9.43% higher atrazine removal was achieved in the presence of vetiver (p < 0.05). The atrazine dissipation in the submerged soil followed first-order kinetics, the degradation constant was 0.066, and the half-life of atrazine dissipation was shortened by 6.86 days in the presence of vetiver. The present study suggests that vetiver can take up atrazine from submerged soil and accumulate in the leaf, which could then degrade in the leaf. Novelty statement: Although the fate of atrazine in agricultural soils has been extensively investigated through various experiments, little is known about the effect of vetiver grass on atrazine dissipation from submerged soil. With the identification of soil-leaf transportation and four metabolites in vetiver leaf and soils, significantly accelerated atrazine dissipation from the submerged soil was achieved in the presence of vetiver. Particularly, the formation of less toxic dealkylated products in the leaf indicated vetiver is a promising grass for atrazine removal from submerged soil.

Crop microbiome-phyllosphere interactions are vital for intercropping disease control. Although evidence suggests that intercropping enhances nutrient efficiency and recruits beneficial bacteria at the root-soil interface, limited research has explored changes in the phyllosphere microbiome in response to foliar diseases. Pot experiments were conducted to investigate how wheat stripe rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici ( Pst), affects shoot biomass, total nitrogen, and total potassium content; changes of phyllosphere bacteria; co-occurrence networks; and ecological functions in wheat and faba bean intercropping using 16S amplicon sequencing. Microbial characterization revealed that Pst infection altered the phyllosphere bacteria of wheat and faba bean, reducing evenness and richness, shifting community structure with the emergence of new bacteria, and weakening microbial networks under both planting patterns. Compared with monocropping, intercropping displayed bacterial features of an integrated system, fortified wheat community diversity with new bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa in wheat and Pantoea and Burkholderia in faba bean, and strengthened the bacterial network of wheat in response to Pst infection. Intercropping enhanced nitrogen and carbon cycling in wheat leaves by improving nitrite respiration and aromatic hydrocarbon degradation. The enriched phyllosphere bacterial structure positively correlated with the crop's performance by balancing shoot biomass, nitrogen, and potassium accumulation between wheat and faba bean upon Pst infection to mitigate the disease index of wheat. Overall, these changes may positively correlate with functions aiding wheat in suppressing wheat stripe rust. The findings provide new insight into understanding how intercropping improves response to pathogen challenge as an effective planting practice. [ ] Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .

Cadmium (Cd) and sulfamethoxazole (SMX) have attracted extensive attention due to their high detection frequency and high concentration in water bodies. In order to explore the remediation potential of Acorus calamus on Cd-sulfamethoxazole (Cd-SMX) pollution, a greenhouse simulation experiment was conducted to study the removal effect of Acorus calamus on the combined pollution of Cd (initial mass concentration 0.5 mg/L) and SMX (initial mass concentration 5 mg/L) and the physiological response of Acorus calamus to Cd-SMX pollution stress. The results showed that within the 28-day cultivation period, Acorus calamus planting significantly enhanced the removal effect of Cd-SMX in wetlands (p < 0.05). After planting Acorus calamus, the degradation rate of SMX increased by 18.34%, and the removal rate of Cd increased by 29.87% (28 days). There were no significant differences in leaf fresh weight, plant height and root length, MDA, SOD and POD contents of Acorus calamus under Cd-SMX stress compared with the blank control group (P > 0.05), indicating that Acorus calamus has good tolerance to Cd-SMX pollution. Chlorophyll content was significantly positively correlated with Cd and SMX content in the environment, indicating that Cd and SMX at the experimental concentrations can promote plant photosynthesis; Cd and SMX content in Acorus calamus roots was significantly higher than that in leaves, indicating that Acorus calamus has a strong retention effect on Cd and SMX. In summary, under the experimental concentrations, Acorus calamus showed good growth potential and had a certain tolerance to Cd-SMX pollution.

Crop and livestock production in Yunnan province has experienced significant growth over the last decade. However, this progress has come at the expense of excessive phosphorus (P) losses to the environment, leading to ecosystem degradation and adverse effects on human health. As a result, there has been a growing focus on mitigating P losses within the crop-livestock systems (CLSs). Nonetheless, research on quantitatively analyzing the spatial and temporal distribution of P flows in these systems remains inadequate. Addressing this issue requires adopting an appropriate spatial scale for P management, which balances accurate regional representation with sufficient data granularity. Using statistical data, literature and geospatial data collected from 1995 to 2014, a time series and spatial distribution of P flows associated with CLSs was analyzed using the SFA model (Substance Flows Analysis). The results showed that total P inputs to crop systems increased by 52% (from 2.89 × 10⁵ t in 1995 to 4.4 × 10⁵ t in 2014) in Yunnan province. Concurrently, feed import as a dominant input to animal subsystems experienced a minor decrease over the same period. Application of P fertilizer was the main source of P inputs. Soil accumulation emerged as a prominent pathway, contributing to 50% of the total P output in 2014. Additionally, losses to water, stemming from terrain conditions and improper fertilizer application patterns, represented other notable pathways. A spatial analysis of P use efficiency categorized the region into three sub-areas comprising 16 municipalities. In region I, soil testing and fertilizer regulation could support targeted P fertilizer application based on the nutrient supplying capacity of soil and crop nutrient demands. Region II calls for the integration of crop and livestock production, while the region III would necessitate the expansion of animal production and advancements in manure management technology. This approach of sub-area classification presents a promising strategy for improving nutrient management in areas with complex terrain and diverse climate condition.