Promoting green transformation by ensuring food security while reducing the environmental footprint of food and farming with agriculture green development

William J. Davies is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology at Lancaster University, UK. He has published more than 300 papers in the international journals. His research group develops interventions that are aimed at enhancing global food security, while particularly focusing on understanding how crop plants might sustain yield under increasingly challenging environmental conditions. The Davies lab has won a ‘Queen’s Award for Innovation’ for work on sustainable resource use in agriculture. Recent work has highlighted the accumulation of microplastics in agricultural soils across the globe. He has an interest in helping farmers profit from novel science and until recently directed a professional postgraduate programme for those who work in the global food supply chain. Davies was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental Botany for 10 years, he is currently an Associate Editor of Food and Energy Security and an Associate Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering. In 2011, he was awarded a CBE for services to science

Jianbo Shen is Professor of Plant Nutrition, Deputy Dean of National Academy of Agriculture Green Development, College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University. He has been engaged in studies on plant–soil interactions and interventions that are aimed at enhancing resource use efficiency and food security, particularly focusing on root/rhizosphere nutrition and management for improving nutrient/water use efficiency and crop productivity with environmental resilience. He is also interested in innovating Green Intelligent Fertilizer, efficient use of phosphate rock and new phosphorus fertilizers. He is a recipient of the National Outstanding Youth Fund of China. He won the second prizes of the state natural science award and state science and technology progress awards. He has published more than 160 peer-reviewed papers in international journals, and was selected by Clarivate Analytics as a global ‘highly cited researcher’ during 2019–2023. He is a fellow of ‘The African Academy of Sciences’, and serves as a member of Scientific Advisory Committee to the Our Phosphorus Future Report and a member of the Global Phosphorus Institute’s (GPI) Science Committee. He is currently an Associated Editor of Food and Energy Security, and a Guest Editor of Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering

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The Author(s) 2024. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)