Mechanistic Insights into Mulching and Plant Physiological Attributes Under Abiotic Stresses

Abstract

Drought, salinity, temperature extremes, and heavy metals are the major environmental factors that limit sustainable crop production worldwide and conse-quently restrict crop yield. There is a dire need for environment-friendly agricul-tural practices to achieve long-term food production for the growing population. Mulching has become a common method in modern agricultural practices because of its numerous benefits, such as moisture conservation, augmentation temperature of the soil, reduction of insect pests, weed management, escalation of crop yield, and the effective use of nutrients present in the soil, as well as decreased soil salinity. Mulching also enhances plants’ resistance to pests and diseases and various stress factors like heat, salinity, drought, metals, and high or low temperatures. In addition to this, mulches could also provide economic, aesthetic, and other ecological bene-fits to agriculture. Mulching markedly increased the growth, yield, nutrient use, and water use efficiency in crop plants under stressed and non-stressed conditions. As a result, future research could also focus on economic, environment-friendly, and, more importantly, biodegradable materials on plant growth, balanced nutrition, yield, and quality under various abiotic stress conditions. This chapter focuses on the many essential aspects of mulches on the productivity and establishment of multiple crops under stressful environments.