Cropping systems in Western Australia (WA) are strongly dominated by cereals (wheat, barley and oaten hay) and are inextricably linked to soil quality and moisture supply. So a major research challenge is to devise cropping systems that improve soil health and maximise water-use efficiency. For a profitable and sustainable production system there is a clear need for ‘break crop’ to provide a pe...

During the last few decades, the industrial production and use of Cd resulted in the release of significant quantities of Cd into the environment. Concern about health risks of human exposure to this toxic metal, which may be contained in soil and other environmental compartments, has increased significantly in recent years. Soil ingestion is a potentially important pathway of exposure to soil-...

The monitoring of soil quality should be a control tool used to reduce the adverse health effects arising from exposure to toxic chemicals in soil through cultivated crop absorption. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the monitoring and control system of soil quality in Poland, in terms of consumer safety, for agricultural plants cultivated in areas with known serious cad...

Soil quality assessment may be one of the most contentious topics ever debated by the soil science community. Our objective is to examine the history, present status, and potential for using soil quality assessment as a tool to monitor soil physical, chemical, and biological effects of management decisions that may affect soil and water resources. Differences between inherent and dynamic soil q...

Arsenic (As) speciation and distribution are two important factors in assessing human health risk from As-contaminated soil. In this study, we used the combination of physiologically based extraction test (PBET) and Simulator of Human Intestinal Microbial Ecosystem (SHIME) to determine soil As metabolism by human gut microbiota. The results showed that the percentage of soil arsenate [As(V)] tr...

The objective of this study was to identify the effect of different land uses in peri-urban agriculture on the soil properties. Soil health indicators were evaluated in the top 10 cm at five tilled agricultural sites involving different cropping systems and use of agrochemicals within the peri-urban agricultural areas of Yaounde, Cameroon, and compared with a native forest land. The experimenta...

Soil arthropods comprise a substantial portion of soil biodiversity and regulate processes in the ecosystem. Despite this, cropping system diversification designed to improve health for agriculture is rarely evaluated its effects on arthropod community structure. As result, are not usually considered management decisions. To address this gap, we agricultural through rotation properties using re...