Contribution of Eco-Friendly Agricultural Practices in Improving and Stabilizing Wheat Crop Yield: A Review

Abstract

Wheat is considered to be a strategic crop for achieving food security. Wherefore, one of the current objectives of today’s agriculture is to ensure a consistent and sustainable yield of this particular crop while mitigating its environmental footprint. However, along with the genetic potential of varieties, agricultural practices play a key role in ensuring a high and stable yield of wheat. Under changing climatic conditions, new eco-friendly practices were adopted in the wheat farming system in recent decades. In this review, a large number of peer-reviewed articles have been screened during the last 15 years to evaluate the potential of some environmentally friendly agricultural practices such as tillage system, biological crop protection, crop rotation, intercropping systems, and the integration of resistant varieties in achieving a high and stable wheat yield. The present investigation unveiled that embracing eco-friendly agricultural methods in the wheat farming system holds the potential to engender high and sustainable wheat yields, contingent upon a normative strategy that comprehensively addresses multiple factors. These include the intrinsic attributes of the grown wheat cultivars, plant nutritional parameters, soil agrochemical characteristics, and specific climatic conditions. Further in-depth investigations under field conditions are necessary to help in the discernment of appropriate environmentally agricultural techniques that can efficaciously optimize the yield potential of the different cultivated varieties.