Impact of the sustainable agricultural practices for governing soil health from the perspective of a rising agri-based circular bioeconomy

Soil is a precious and nonrenewable source for agroecosystems of which own health state over time is becoming a focus of global concern. A healthy soil is a harmonious and very complex social system with a good structure, an optimal functional state, and an efficient buffering capacity to maintain a dynamic balance among all productivity factors. There is an urgent need to develop new approaches for the sustainable management of soil quality in depleted soils from a long-term perspective for increasing agricultural productivity and maintaining food security due to global population expansion. Since high crop yield mainly depends on the improvement of soil quality, further efforts must be addressed to develop advanced technologies/processes in reusing waste biomass accordingly with the circular bioeconomy principles. Although the knowledge of relationships between intrinsic factors of soil fertility and crop productivity is the baseline for the optimal soil management, this issue is nevertheless overlooked by stakeholders. Soil organic matter (SOM) associates carbon availability with the plant nutrients (mainly nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) leading to the strongest positive impacts of the environmental functions and food production. Unfortunately, there is a progressive trend to lose the SOM stock, so altering the biological functions of the soils. Despite, farmer overlooks the mechanisms for preserving SOM accumulation by adopting inappropriate practices to counteract soil decline consequently to climate change and deterioration of agroecosystems. A wide spread of microplastic and nanoplastic pollutants (MNPs) in the environment have added further concerns due to their potentially hazardous risks for soil health thanks to their ubiquitousness and persistence. Nonetheless, the interactions of MNPs with the soil components, microbial communities, plants, and fauna that could determine the strongest impacts on the nutrient availability and food security are still poorly explored. This review work launches some challenges to reader by providing practical solutions, viewpoints, future challenges, and new perspective for restoring soil health by contrasting soil decline from a long-term perspective in organic farming systems in a sustainable agri-based circular bioeconomy system.