Yan Zha

Strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) is an economically important berry crop in protected horticulture, mainly produced through soil‑based and solid‑substrate soilless systems. Soil cultivation possesses strong physicochemical buffering and abundant indigenous microbial resources, but suffers from continuous cropping obstacles including soil degradation and soil‑borne pathogen accumulation. Solid‑substrate cultivation can isolate soil‑borne pathogens and enables precise rhizosphere manipulation; however, it is constrained by low buffering capacity, unstable microbial assembly, peat‑related ecological costs, and waste‑substrate disposal risks. This review builds a unified analytical framework centered on the cascade "medium physicochemical properties – microbial community – extracellular enzymes – root physiology – yield‑quality performance" and clarifies the conceptual boundaries among soil cultivation, solid‑substrate cultivation, and hydroponics. We analyze the sources of heterogeneity across published results, including cultivar genotype, medium properties, water‑fertilizer management, growth stage, and analytical methodology. Most existing evidence is correlational, whereas rigorous causal manipulation experiments remain scarce, which explains why no universal consensus has been reached on the relative superiority of the two production modes. Key research gaps include fragmented rhizospheric mechanism research, lack of cross‑study standardized experimental conditions, insufficient normalization of enzyme and microbiome datasets, and a shortage of long‑term multi‑objective field assessments. We highlight that microbial–functional decoupling frequently occurs in both soil and solid‑substrate systems, indicating that microbial community composition alone cannot represent real rhizosphere biogeochemical processes. Based on evidence synthesis, differentiated optimization strategies are proposed: soil systems should prioritize soil‑health restoration, whereas solid‑substrate systems need peat‑substitute development, microbial–habitat compatible inoculation, and substrate circular regeneration. Shared future directions cover in‑situ rhizosphere sensing, causal validation experiments, and multi‑objective evaluation balancing yield, fruit quality, resource cost, and environmental footprints. This review provides theoretical references for sustainable protected strawberry production.

Long-term continuous cropping and poor tillage practices can lead to the degradation of soil physicochemical properties and the deterioration of soil microbiota. Restructuring microbial communities and improving the soil micro-ecological balance are essential for the prevention and control of soil-borne diseases in continuous cropping systems. In this study, strawberry soils cultivated for five years were used to investigate the effects of different soil disinfection methods, including solarization (SE), dazomet fumigation (DA), lime nitrogen application (LN), and biofumigation (EM), on soil physicochemical properties, soil bacterial and fungal community diversity, and predictive functions, using macro-genomics sequencing. The results showed that: (1) Different treatments reduced the diversity and abundance of bacteria and fungi to varying degrees. (2) DA treatment significantly decreased the relative abundance of Actinomycetota (9.32%) and significantly increased the relative abundance of Deinococcota (0.64%), while Pseudomonadota exhibited the lowest abundance in DA. DA treatment significantly increased the relative abundance of Phenylobacterium (18.42%) and Geobacter (9.75%). All the treatments significantly decreased the relative abundance of Sphingomonas. EM, LN, and SE treatments increased Pseudomonadota, Pseudomonas, and Deinococcota to varying degrees. (3) Different disinfection treatments increased the number of potential biomarkers in soil bacterial communities. (4) Correlation analysis revealed that soil microbial community characteristics were mainly influenced by pH, electrical conductivity (EC), neutral phosphatase (NP), available phosphorus (AP), urease (UR), and sucrase (SU). (5) The EC content of the soil under DA treatment increased by 42.49% compared to CK. Different treatments significantly reduced effective phosphorus and organic carbon contents, while increasing the AP content. (6) LN treatment markedly increased soil urease activity by nearly 50%, along with moderate increases in sucrase and neutral phosphatase activities. In contrast, SE treatment resulted in a noticeable reduction in sucrase activity and a slight decrease in neutral phosphatase activity. (7) Different sterilization methods increased the relative abundance of functions related to amino acid transport and metabolism, carbohydrate transport and metabolism, and replication, recombination, and repair, while decreasing functions related to RNA processing and modification, transcription, and cytoskeleton. The findings contribute to a better understanding of how disinfection strategies influence soil health and offer insights for optimizing sustainable strawberry production. Our future research should focus on the long-term impacts and field-scale validation of these treatments.

Drought stress can reduce strawberry yield and quality and is one of the main abiotic factors restricting strawberry production in China. Nano-agricultural technology has significant regulatory effects in improving crop yield and quality and reducing agricultural environmental pollution. We performed a pot experiment using FenYu No. 1 strawberry and applied copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) and selenium NPs (SeNPs) to study their effects on the growth, quality, photosynthetic parameter indexes, and physiological characteristics of strawberry plants under drought stress. The growth and photosynthesis of strawberry plants were significant adversely affected by moderate drought stress (DS, 60% field capacity (FC)) and severe drought stress (SS, 25% FC). Compared with normal water-holding conditions, the application of CuNPs, SeNPs, and their combination effectively increased the agronomic traits of strawberry plants; improved fruit quality; and enhanced the content of photosynthetic pigments (chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and total chlorophyll), photosynthetic characteristic parameters, chlorophyll fluorescence parameters, and water-use efficiency. In addition, the exogenous application of CuNPs and SeNPs improved the drought tolerance of plants by increasing the activities of antioxidant enzymes catalase, peroxidase, and superoxide dismutase, and decreasing the malondialdehyde content, with the following overall trend among the treatments: control < CuNPs < SeNPs < CuNPs + SeNPs. The results of the principal component analysis showed that the two extracted principal components could reflect 85.54% of the information of the original data, leaf photosynthetic pigments, photosynthetic characteristic parameters, chlorophyll fluorescence parameters, and strawberry agronomic traits indexes and could be used as the primary indexes for evaluating the improvement of strawberry growth by nanofertilizers under drought-stress conditions. Taken together, our results indicate that nanofertilizers have potential for improving the growth, quality, and physiological characteristics of strawberries under drought stress.

Acid rain (AR) and atmospheric particulate matter (APM) are important environmental issues that often occur simultaneously in agricultural regions, the combined pollution of AR and atmospheric fine particles (PM_2.5) containing heavy metals has negatively affected the growth of seedlings and has become a hot research topic. In this paper, we established exposure scenarios to simulate the AR and the cadmium-containing PM_2.5 (PM_2.5-Cd) pollutions. Under the scenarios, hazardous impacts of AR and PM_2.5-Cd on growth, physiological and biochemical characteristics of pakchoi were evaluated. After being exposed simulated AR and PM_2.5-Cd for 21 days, our results indicate that: single treatment with either AR (pH 5.5) or PM_2.5-Cd, or a combined treatment of AR (pH 5.5) and PM_2.5-Cd (150, 300 μg·m⁻³) increased the growth of pack hoi seedlings. Combined treatments with low-acidity AR (pH 3.5) and PM_2.5-Cd (500 μg·m⁻³), significantly decreased the growth and the Soil and Plant Analyzer Development (SPAD) of pakchoi, and it also induced a significantly increase in foliar MDA content and catalase (CAT) activity, while decreasing peroxidase (POD) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity. The Cd concentration of leaves increased with an increasing PM_2.5-Cd concentration. Correlation analysis indicated that the growth and SPAD of pakchoi were highly correlated with the foliar MDA content and enzyme activities under the combined treatments with AR and PM_2.5-Cd treatment. Our results might serve as a guide to increase agricultural production and food crop safety in areas with high levels of AR and PM_2.5 pollution.

Foliar dust passively adsorbs anthropogenic heavy metals (HM) present in the atmosphere and thus reduces the total suspended particle (TSP) level. Urban plants have been shown to reduce the atmospheric level of ambient particulate matter (PM) via foliar dust adsorption. We studied heavy metal concentrations in the foliar dust of three typical tree species in five functional areas of Nanjing city. The highest levels of Cd (19.89±4.56 mg/kg), Pb (167.33±16.61 mg/kg) and Cr (197.42±13.96 mg/kg) were found in the Traffic Area (TA), whereas the highest levels of Cu (309.27±25.79 mg/kg) and Zn (1036.88±52.77 mg/kg) were found in the Industrial Area (IA). Significant differences were found between tree species. The amount of PM per unit leaf area generally decreased in this order: Cedrus deodara>Pittosporum tobira>Cinnamomum camphora. The highest mass percentages of large, coarse and fine PM were captured by C. camphora, P. tobira and C. deodara, respectively. A scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to investigate the surfaces of the leaves, as well as the density and size of the stomata of each species. Our results suggest that an oily and coarse leaf surface is the most important factor facilitating PM accumulation, but large high-density stomata also enhance PM adsorption and thus favor HM accumulation in foliar dust. This study shows that the HM concentrations in foliar dust can act as an indicator of air pollution. Anhui Agricultural University, 360 Changjiang West Road,, 30036 Hefei, China

Urban plants have been proven to mitigate ambient particulate matter (PM), which can benefit urban planners in their attempts to control urban air pollution. In this study, PM depositions on the leaves of 8 tree species were quantitatively analysed in 7 functional areas of the city of Nanjing, China, over the course of one year. The results demonstrated that leaf PM included different particle size fractions (PM10 and PM2.5), and differed among seasons and species. The highest amounts of total PM, PM10, and PM2.5 were found in the industrial area, and the mean values were 80.24 μg/cm2, 52.14 μg/cm2, and 15.51 μg/cm2, respectively, and the highest accumulation of total PM (60.65 μg/cm2), PM10 (37.29 μg/cm2), and PM2.5 (11.23 μg/cm2) occurred in winter. Significant differences were found between the tree species tested. Cedrus deodara exhibited high amounts of the total PM, PM10, and PM2.5 accumulations. This study examined the mass and quantity distribution of PM among tree species, and identified the particles combined with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). In terms of particle mass, 48% of the identified particles had a diameter of 10 μm, and only 18.3% of them had a diameter of 2.5 μm. In terms of particle number, the results indicated that 73% of them had a diameter of 2.5 μm, and only 5.5% of them had a diameter of 10 μm. To test the relationship between leaf traits and PM2.5 accumulation, results showed that stomata size, density, and hair were significantly related to the PM2.5 capture quantity. As far as we know, this is the first paper to present the mass and quantity distribution of the PM of different tree species in Nanjing. The results not only give comprehensive insights into the dust-retaining capability of tree species but also offer a selection of species for urban green areas where the goal is to mitigate urban airborne PM.