Recently Prof. Dr. Heli Lu’s team has carried out an important research on adopting nature based solutions (NBS) to alleviate climate change stress. Dr. Muhammad Adil as the first author, this study has been published by the journal ‘Frontiers in Plant Science’ (IF=6.62) - an important international journal in the field of Plant Sciences (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.1007222/full).

       Global climate change stress has a great influence on agricultural crop production which leads to the global problems such as food security. To cope with global climate change, NBS are desirable because these lead to improve our environment. Environmental stresses such as drought and salinity are big soil problems and can be eradicated by increasing soil organic matter which is directly related to soil organic carbon (SOC). Dr. Muhammad Adil has made a quantitative research to determine the best land use pattern in order to increase carbon fractions into the soil that will improve crop production and reduce the risk of food security.

        In general, field practices are interwined with climatic factors, so there is a need to check their influence on crop production separately and determine which factor is more effective in soil carbon sequestration under different land use patterns on a global scale. Most importantly, there is a need to search for those management practices (NBS) that are helpful in retaining carbon into the soil that ultimately improve soil health and agricultural production.

       A meta-analysis is a valuable tool that uses the effect size of individual studies combining the data from different field management practices originating from different soil and climate conditions. By analyzing the data from 97 studies on a global scale, the quantitative results showed that multiple cropping under conservation tillage systems increased soil carbon fractions on an average by 25% compared to mono-cropping and conventional tillage systems. In particular, applying conservation tillage can potentially be a successful strategy for enhancing SOC pool within the 0–150 mm soil profile in medium-textured soil regions with 1,000 mm mean annual precipitation and 8- 15 ◦C mean annual temperature under multiple cropping systems. Thus, quantitative results could be obtained by using meta-analysis on global scale and also on site specific studies to achieve the objectives related to sustainable environment.

     This study was published on 21^st September, 2022 by Journal ‘Frontiers in Plant Science’ under the title “Climate change Stress Alleviation through Nature Based Solutions: A global perspective”. The journal ‘Frontiers in Plant Science’, a peer-reviewed leading journal in the field of plant science and environmental sciences, is published by Frontiers Media S.A.