# Sustainable Agriculture and Soil Conservation
## 2 Overview of This Special Issue
The main results showed that when using 50% of the regular irrigation, reusable reflective mulching reduced the water loss and soil carbon mineralization while not affecting (and sometimes increasing) the net carbon assimilation, yield and fruit size. Consequently, water productivity was drastically increased. The investigation allowed for the conclusion that a reflective mulching strategy is promising from the point of view of WUE optimization, especially in hot and dry areas with clay soils and low organic matter contents. [PERSON] et al. [13] investigated the effects of different soil management methods (conventional tillage, CT, minimum tillage, MT, and no-tillage, NT), both with fertilization and without fertilization, on the quantity of SOC at different soil depths and soil particle size fractions. Diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFT) was also performed to obtain information on both the SOC quality and the mineralogical composition of these soil fractions. The results showed that CT provided the highest amount of the finest fraction, while fertilization improved the microbial community with the increase of soil microaggregates. The coarse fraction was highest in the upper soil layer, while the finest fraction was highest in the deepest one. The greatest OC content was observed in the topsoil layer and in the finest soil fraction. The DRIFT analysis could provide information about the quality of the main minerals present in the different soil size fractions. [PERSON] et al. [14] measured both the unsaturated and saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, determined with simple and low-cost field infiltration methods--a minidisk tension infiltrometer, MDTI [22], and Beerkan [23]--for three land covers, namely (1) pastures, (2) 9-year-old restored forest and (3) remnant forest. The paper, which was relevant because it provided the first measurements of soil water repellency (SWR) in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, proved that MDTI and Beerkan infiltrations gave complementary information, highlighting increasing hydraulic conductivities, especially at the remnant forest plots, when moving from near-saturated to saturated conditions. Moreover, measuring the hydraulic conductivity with MDTI allowed the estimation of the macroscopic capillary length [24], which is a hydrodynamic soil parameter useful for investigating the impact of soil management on water saving [25]. The authors concluded that the applied approach (MDTI + Beerkan) allowed the design of better estimates of the saturated soil hydraulic conductivity under challenging field conditions, such as soil water repellency (SWR). [PERSON] et al. [15] evaluated the impact of soil amendment with biochar from brewers' spent grain (BSG) on hop growth. The field investigation was carried out in Rieti (central Italy). Three different German cultivars of hop plant were considered, and biochar was added at a 20% level. Biochar's effects on root development, shoots, pine length and crop yield were evaluated using multivariate image analysis and general linear models. The results showed that biochar significantly improved root growth. Overall, no variability in shoots, number of leaves or pine length was observed between the two treatments for all cultivars or among the genotypes considered. Moreover, soil amendment significantly improved the yield (number of cones). The authors concluded that BSG-derived biochar could be useful for improving hop plant growth and cone production because it can supply key nutrients for plant growth and improve the soil's properties. [PERSON] et al. [16] evaluated the production capacity of organic horticultural systems and the ex-post sustainability using a new multi-attribute decision model named DEXi-met.