Mouedden et al. (2026) Integrated Decision-Support Perspectives for Soil, Water, and Plant Health Management in Semi-Arid Agriculture

Identification

• Journal: BIO Web of Conferences
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-01-01
• Authors: M. El Mouedden, Driss Azdem, Jamal Mabrouki, Souad El Hajjaji
• DOI: 10.1051/bioconf/202621503014

Research Groups

• Laboratory of Spectroscopy, Molecular Modeling, Materials, Nanomaterial’s, Water and Environment, CERNE2D, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Faculty of Science, Rabat, Morocco

Short Summary

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for integrated decision-making in semi-arid agriculture, addressing the dynamic interdependencies of soil, water, and plant health to overcome the limitations of single-criterion approaches and improve crop resilience and sustainable production.

Objective

• To identify the limitations of isolated decision-making in semi-arid agriculture and develop a conceptual framework for integrating soil, water, and plant health reasoning to support comprehensive and sustainable agricultural management.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Conceptual framework applicable to semi-arid agricultural systems and field conditions generally, without a specific geographic focus.
• Temporal Scale: Emphasizes dynamic interdependencies, evolution over time, short-term variations, long-term degradations, and time-related dynamics within the agroecosystem.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: None (the paper develops a conceptual framework and does not introduce or apply new algorithms or models). It critiques existing approaches that may use models like evapotranspiration (ET) models or machine learning for image analysis.
• Data sources: None (the paper is conceptual). It discusses potential data sources for an integrated system, including soil analysis, irrigation records, weather station readings, field-level crop growth measurements, new sensor technologies, remote sensing, and data-driven models.

Main Results

• Identified significant limitations of isolated decision-making approaches in semi-arid agriculture, specifically for soil-only, irrigation-only, and disease-only strategies.
• Developed a conceptual framework for integrated agronomic reasoning that represents the agroecosystem through three interacting state domains: Soil, Water and Irrigation, and Plant Health.
• Formulated coupled dynamics and decision dependencies, explicitly describing how soil, water, and plant health states influence each other and evolve over time, including feedback loops.
• Proposed a multi-criteria decision logic that integrates domain-specific knowledge (thresholds, empirical rules, predictive models) while ensuring cross-domain consistency in management recommendations.

Contributions

• Offers a broad, application-independent, and integrative agronomical reasoning framework specifically tailored for semi-arid agriculture.
• Provides a theoretical structure capable of unifying diverse data sources, analytical techniques, and decision-making strategies under a single system approach.
• Explicitly describes the temporal interactions and feedback loops between agroecosystem states, addressing a major limitation of previous domain-based systems.
• Establishes a foundational basis for future developments in integrated decision-support, digital agronomy, and sustainable resource management.
• Contributes to the broader shift from fragmented digital agriculture solutions towards more comprehensive and context-aware agronomic decision-making.

Funding

None mentioned in the paper.

Citation

@article{Mouedden2026Integrated,
  author = {Mouedden, M. El and Azdem, Driss and Mabrouki, Jamal and Hajjaji, Souad El},
  title = {Integrated Decision-Support Perspectives for Soil, Water, and Plant Health Management in Semi-Arid Agriculture},
  journal = {BIO Web of Conferences},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1051/bioconf/202621503014},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1051/bioconf/202621503014}
}