ABSTRACT
The sustainability of agricultural production is one of the major contemporary concerns for humans. Because agricultural production is the unique source of food for the increasing world population, it is a great challenge for man to ensure food production for this population using the nite resources. Sustainability is dependent to a large degree on environment quality, and management and maintenance of soils are considered central factors of the sustainable agricultural and food production systems. The incommensurate development in molecular biology and genetic engineering, as well as the new emerging technologies, for example, metabolomics, metagenomics, nutrigenomics and more recently ionomics, are translated to agricultural research and productive technologies. This translation would be of great help for human to examine how available and limited natural resources and environment would let him reach the goal of the global sustainable agricultural and food production systems. Thus, the principles that regulate the new agricultural and food production systems including soil management and environment preservation become fundamental rules to the philosophy of sustainability. While natural resources are limited and environmental degradation is progressing dangerously, it is necessary to nd an issue to the two major concerns which are population growth and good life. On the other hand, the transformation from industrial to sustained agriculture could be considered as a success, because this concept of sustainability will make and ensure the ‘balance’ between the needs and the developments.
