Rice production accounts for approximately half of the freshwater resources utilized in agriculture, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions such as methane (CH4) from flooded paddy fields. To address this challenge, environmentally friendly and cost-effective water-saving techniques have become widely adopted in rice cultivation. However, the implementation of water-saving treatments (WSTs) in paddy-field rice has been associated with a substantial yield loss of up to 50% as well as a reduction in nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). In this study, we discovered that the target of rapamycin (TOR) signaling pathway is compromised in rice under WST. Polysome profiling-coupled transcriptome sequencing (polysome-seq) analysis unveiled a substantial reduction in global translation in response to WST associated with the downregulation of TOR activity. Molecular, biochemical, and genetic analyses revealed new insights into the impact of the positive TOR-S6K-RPS6 and negative TOR-MAF1 modules on translation repression under WST. Intriguingly, ammonium exhibited a greater ability to alleviate growth constraints under WST by enhancing TOR signaling, which simultaneously promoted uptake and utilization of ammonium and nitrogen allocation. We further demonstrated that TOR modulates the ammonium transporter AMT1;1 as well as the amino acid permease APP1 and dipeptide transporter NPF7.3 at the translational level through the 5\' untranslated region. Collectively, these findings reveal that enhancing TOR signaling could mitigate rice yield penalty due to WST by regulating the processes involved in protein synthesis and NUE. Our study will contribute to the breeding of new rice varieties with increased water and fertilizer utilization efficiency.

Achieving global climate change mitigation targets requires low-carbon production in agriculture. In such an endeavor, a new classification of climate-adaptive technology is defined to affect agriculture towards the low-carbon direction, but such an impact has seldom been empirically tested in the literature. In this paper, we investigate the impact of climate-adaptive technological innovation on agricultural carbon efficiency, a proxy for low-carbon agriculture. We use a stochastic directional distance function framework and a cross-country dataset covering 38 OECD countries. Additionally, we test the heterogeneous impact, considering that regional economic development is a crucial condition for deploying advanced technologies. The findings show that climate-adaptive technological innovation can promote carbon efficiency in agriculture, and this aggregate effect hides significant heterogeneity at different levels of economic development. The higher the economic development level is, the better climate-adaptive technological innovation contributes to improving agricultural carbon efficiency. Then, related policy implications are set forth.

Mulching strategies - including plastic film mulching (FM) and straw mulching (SM) - can enhance crop yields while affecting multiple greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes. However, most of currently published site-based studies only focus on a certain gas, resulting in an inability to spatially integrated understanding of changes in agricultural global warming potential (GWP) and greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) caused by mulching across China. Thus, we developed an optimal model considering crop type, meteorology, soil and management variables by four machine learning methods, namely support vector machine, multilayer perceptron, random forest, and gradient boosting machine (GBM). Then we mapped the relative changes in yield and GHG fluxes caused by mulching strategies. The GBM model had the best simulation capability for yield and GHGs in China. Our result showed that FM increased yield in maize (25 %) and wheat (19 %), while SM respectively increased by 14 % and 11 %. Among the relative changes due to mulching strategies, yield and N2O emissions were mainly influenced by soil fertility and soil properties, CH4 uptakes and CO2 emissions were more affected by environmental factors. GWP in maize and wheat average increased by 40 % under FM, while SM decreased GWP by 14 % and 2 %, respectively. Besides, FM average increased GHGI in maize and wheat by 17 % and 9 %, and SM decreased GHGI by 22 % and 12 %, respectively. Spatially, FM reduced maize GWP on 19 % of cropland, while SM reduced maize and wheat GWP on 71 % and 64 % of cropland, respectively. Soil pH was significantly correlated with ΔGHGI in maize and wheat. Our analysis not only estimated for the first time the spatial effects of mulching strategies across China, but also systematically analyzes the agricultural carbon emission mitigation potential of mulching strategies, which promote the development of low-carbon agriculture based on locally appropriate mulching strategies.

In order to achieve the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, the agricultural sector has been given high priority to reduce carbon emissions. Since consumption is the ultimate goal of production, the consumption of low-carbon agricultural products is of great significance to promote the reduction of agricultural carbon emissions. Regional brand agricultural product is an important tool to promote the development of regional economy to \"green, low-carbon, branded and high-quality\", and has the technical and institutional conditions to develop into low-carbon agricultural product, so this study takes regional brand agricultural products as the representative of low-carbon agricultural products. As a information source to guide the public to consume in the green and low-carbon way, local government can effectively develop the market for low-carbon agricultural products and drive the development of low-carbon agriculture from the demand side.
Based on structural equation model with bootstrap method, this paper focuses on the mechanism of the influence of local government information source characteristics (credibility, professionalism, and attractiveness) on consumers\' willingness to purchase low-carbon agricultural products, and explores the mediating role of perceived benefits and perceived risks.
The following findings are established: first, the credibility and professionalism of local governments play a positive role in influencing the purchase willingness of low-carbon agricultural products through perceived benefits, with credibility having the greatest degree of influence. Second, the attractiveness of local governments positively influences consumers\' willingness to purchase low-carbon agricultural products through perceived risk. Third, perceived benefits play a fully mediating role between credibility and purchase intention, play a partially mediating role between professionalism and purchase willingness, perceived risks play a partially mediating role between attractiveness and purchase willingness.
This study provides new ideas for the construction of low-carbon agricultural products and low-carbon development in the agricultural sector from the perspective of local government information sources.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the intricate relationships between human health and the social-ecological system in an era of climate and global change. Widespread COVID-19 adversely affected farmers\' employment, production practices, and livelihood resilience. At the same time, climate change is a key issue limiting agricultural production worldwide. Emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are a major factor leading to global climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production are receiving increasing attention. Therefore, it is particularly important to develop low-carbon agriculture. Based on data from 920 family farms in Jiangsu province and Shaanxi province, this study constructs a structural equation model and empirically tests the relationship between the variables using the bootstrap method. The results show that: (1) climate change awareness did not directly stimulate farmers\' willingness to pursue low-carbon production; (2) climate change awareness has an impact on low-carbon production willingness through perceived ease of use and consequence awareness; and (3) anti-risk ability can effectively moderate the impact of climate change awareness on low-carbon production behavior in agriculture. The theoretical model framework proposed in this study provides a reference for research in the field of low-carbon agriculture and also provides some insights and suggestions for environmentalists and governments. In addition, policymakers should effectively raise the sense of responsibility of farmers to address climate change and promote low-carbon agricultural production to achieve healthy and sustainable agricultural development.

Low-carbon agriculture is essential for protecting the global climate and sustainable agricultural economics. Since China is a predominantly agricultural country, the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies by local farmers is crucial. The past literature on low-carbon technologies has highlighted the influence of demographic, economic, and environmental factors, while the psychological factors have been underexplored. A questionnaire-based approach was used to assess the psychological process underlying the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies by 1,114 Chinese rice farmers in this paper, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was empirically employed to test our theoretical model. The results indicated that farmers\' low-carbon production attitude and behavioral efficiency perception directly and positively affected the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies and indirectly affected it via low-carbon production intention. Besides, production implementation cost and socio-environmental factor could moderate the direct effects of low-carbon production attitude, behavioral efficiency perception, and low-carbon production intention on farmers\' adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies. In this respect, socio-environmental factor yielded more significant moderating effects. Additionally, this research provides policy implications for promoting low-carbon agricultural technologies in developing countries and regions.

In the transition to low-carbon agriculture, smallholder farmers face more constraints. Identifying lead smallholder farmers and leveraging their peer effects can accelerate low-carbon agricultural technology extension among smallholder farmers. Based on survey data from 643 rice farmers in Zhejiang Province, China, this study constructs a finite mixture model (FMM) to identify lead smallholder farmers and then uses a quantile regression model (QRM) to explore their behavioral determinants. The main conclusions are as follows. First, despite the homogeneity in the production mode and resource constraints, lead smallholder farmers are younger and more open to risk, and they have higher educational levels and more family laborers. Second, a higher use efficiency of heterogeneous information is the key to differentiating lead smallholder farmers from other smallholder farmers. Third, green agricultural producer services can effectively alleviate resource constraints and contribute to the low-carbon transition of all smallholder farmers. These results can help redesign targeted extension policies to incentivize lead smallholder farmers.

Because of global environmental problems, low-carbon agriculture has gained increasing importance both in developed and developing countries. Hence, there is a need to find ways to develop more efficient agricultural systems. The purpose of this article is to identify the drivers of low-carbon agriculture on farms in the Wielkopolska region (in Poland). We aimed to take an original approach to investigate low-carbon agriculture with a unique set of different economic and environmental variables and contribute to the literature, which is not very extensive in terms of microeconomic research, including research on farmers in the Wielkopolska region. Therefore, we employed a multiple-factor measurement model for structural equation modeling (SEM) of data collected individually from 120 farms in 2020. As a result, we formulated the following conclusions: the increasing productivity of factors (land, labor, and capital) have a positive effect on low-carbon farming, just as increasing fertilizer and energy efficiency. Moreover, thermal insulation is also important for low-carbon agriculture, with efficiency of fertilizer use being the most important factor. We believe that the issues of farm use of fertilizers and thermal insulation of buildings should be more broadly included in energy policy, both at the national and the European Union (EU) levels. Some of these factors however are already present in the common agricultural policy (CAP) for 2021-2027.

This paper focuses on the impact of changes in planting industry structure on carbon emissions. Based on the statistical data of the planting industry in three provinces in Northeast China from 1999 to 2018, the study calculated the carbon emissions, carbon absorptions and net carbon sinks of the planting industry by using crop parameter estimation and carbon emissions inventory estimation methods. In addition, the multiple linear regression model and panel data model were used to analyze and test the carbon emissions and net carbon sinks of the planting industry. The results show that: (1). The increase of the planting area of rice, corn, and peanuts in the three northeastern provinces of China will promote carbon emissions, while the increase of the planting area of wheat, sorghum, soybeans, and vegetables will reduce carbon emissions; (2). Fertilizer application, technological progress, and planting structure factors have a significant positive effect on net carbon sinks, among which the changes in the planting industry structure have the greatest impact on net carbon sinks. Based on the comprehensive analysis, it is suggested that, under the guidance of the government, resource endowment and location advantages should be given full play to, and the internal planting structure of crops should be reasonably adjusted so as to promote the development of low-carbon agriculture and accelerate the development process of agricultural modernization.

The emerging field of hydrogen biology has to date mainly been applied in medicine. However, hydrogen biology can also enable positive outcomes in agriculture. Agriculture faces significant challenges resulting from a growing population, climate change, natural disasters, environmental pollution, and food safety issues. In fact, hydrogen agriculture is a practical application of hydrogen biology, which may assist in addressing many of these challenges. It has been demonstrated that hydrogen gas (H2) may enhance plant tolerance towards abiotic and biotic stresses, regulate plant growth and development, increase nutritional values, prolong the shelf life, and decrease the nitrite accumulation during the storage of vegetables, as well as increase the resilience of livestock to pathogens. Our field trials show that H2 may have a promising potential to increase yield and improve the quality of agricultural products. This review aims to elucidate mechanisms for a novel agricultural application of H2 in China. Future development of hydrogen agriculture is proposed as well. Obviously, hydrogen agriculture belongs to a low carbon economy, and has great potential to provide \"safe, tasty, healthy, and high-yield\" agricultural products so that it may improve the sustainability of agriculture.