抄録
Intercropping and relay intercropping regulate soil health through coordinated plant–soil–microbe interactions, offering an effective strategy to enhance resource use efficiency, ecosystem functioning, and the sustainability of agricultural production. Recent advances integrating high-throughput sequencing, multi-omics technologies, and process-based modeling have substantially improved understanding of how these cropping systems modify soil physicochemical properties, nutrient cycling, microbial community assembly, and ecosystem functions. Current evidence indicates that intercropping-driven changes in rhizosphere processes and microbial interactions enhance soil nutrient availability, improve soil structure, and strengthen system resilience; however, the magnitude and direction of these responses vary considerably with crop combinations, environmental conditions, and management practices. Consequently, the mechanistic basis, scale dependence, and generalizability of plant–soil–microbe interactions remain incompletely understood, while the lack of standardized evaluation frameworks and long-term, multi-scale field validation continues to limit cross-study comparison and practical application. This review synthesizes current knowledge of the mechanisms by which intercropping and relay intercropping regulate soil health and microbial ecological processes, critically evaluates the consistency and limitations of existing evidence across different cropping systems, and identifies key research priorities in multi-scale process coupling, microbiome-mediated regulation, and predictive modeling. By integrating ecological mechanisms with emerging analytical approaches, this review establishes a unified conceptual framework for advancing mechanism-based design and precision management of sustainable intercropping systems.
