It is well-known that soil has great importance for humans and animals, as well as the entire environment. Due to it being the main source of our foods, feed of animals, fiber, and fuel, soils should protect from any deterioration, pollution, and any harmful activity. Definitely, there is no development without soil security and conversion. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were announced by the United Nations, cannot be achieved without directly and/or indirectly managing soil functions [5], as presented in Table 1. These goals may address diverse issues inherently linked to soil and/or land, including clean water, as listed in SDG 6 [40], food security in SDG 2 [41], life on land in SDG 15 [42], the climate and its action in SDG 13 [43], and sustaining resources, as listed in SDG 12 [44]. Therefore, both the persistence and quality of soil functions and their achievement for the SDGs largely rely on the health of soil [45,46]. There is a need for the continued support of soil ecosystem services, in line with the goals of sustainable development [5].

Lal et al. [47] reported about sustainable management of soil health and its importance for achieving many SDGs including goal numbers 1 and 2 (ending poverty and hunger), 3 (good health and wellbeing), 5 (gender equality), 6 (clean water and sanitation), 7 (affordable and clean energy), 9 (industry innovation and infrastructure), 11 (sustainable cities and communities), 12 (responsible consumption and production), 13 (climate action), and 15 (life on land). Some of these goals rely considerably on the production of plants and/or soil processes including heat transfer, ion exchange, water movement, sorption and physical filtration, and biophysical and biochemical transformations. Many reports also discussed the SDGs based on different points of view such as the impact of country-level institutional factors [48], the metals industry [49], the tourism industry [50], carbon capture technology [51], and COVID-19 [52]. Finally, it could be concluded that the main challenges related to soil and its management may include (1) the mitigation of the land take, (2) the reduction in and remediation of soil pollution, erosion, and degradation, (3) increasing provisions of ecosystem services and biodiversity, (4) increasing biomass production for food, fiber and energy, (5) the mitigation of and adaptation to climate changes, and (6) improving disaster control such as flooding, drought, landslide, and wildfire as main natural hazards [5].

Soil is the main growing media for several macro- and micro-organisms such as mushrooms. Mushrooms are important plant fungi and have distinguished attributes making them crucial for medicinal, industrial, and agricultural activities. There are several species of mushrooms that belong to the kingdom of fungi and Phylum of Basidiomycota, in addition to several classes such as Agaricomycetes, many orders such as the Order of Agaricales, including many families such as Agaricaceae, Pleurotaceae, and Omphalotaceae. Table 2 shows a comparison of three well-known mushrooms including champignon (Agaricus linnaeus L.), oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus L.), and shiitake mushrooms (Lentinula edodes L.). The anatomy of a mushroom includes the stem of the mushroom, which is called the stipe or stalk, the cap (pileus), and the gills, which are called its lamellae (or lamella), on the underside of the cap. Mushrooms are fungal species that typically grow above/on soil and are fleshy, spore-bearing macrofungal fruiting bodies [53]. There has been growing concern about mushrooms regarding their consumption and cultivation for human health during the last 3 decades [54]. Several mushroom species have nutritional and medicinal properties that are crucial to human health [55,56,57,58,59].

Mushrooms, like other fungi, have a strong impact on soil, both positive and negative. The compost that forms from spent mushroom substrate could be applied to soil as an organic fertilizer, which could increase soil microbial activity and the content of amino acid metabolites in studied orchard [60]. Mushroom also could be used as a bioindicator for soil pollution, such as soil polluted with heavy metals [61,62], toxic elements [63,64], organic pollutants [65], radioactives, or isotopes [66,67,68,69,70], as well as for health risk indices [71,72,73]. It is found that wood-grown mushrooms can adsorb major and trace elements in the wild, growing aboveground mushrooms like Meripilus giganteus. Thus, wood-grown mushrooms can play a crucial role in forest ecosystems due to their symbiosis with trees and/or their ability as saprotrophic organisms in decomposing the dead organic matter [74]. Several mushrooms are also abundant for exploitation in agro-wastes or agro-industrial wastes such as winery and olive mill wastes, producing many beneficial materials such as bioethanol or biofertilizers [75]. A relationship between mushrooms and their role in soil could be noticed in Figure 1. Several human activities, especially urbanization-based anthropogenic pollution, have led to the production of polluted soil- and tree-growing mushroom species [76]. Mushroom residues can also be applied to cultivated crops under a continuous cropping regime, which increase the productivity of cucumber by regulating the soil microbial communities [77]. More roles of mushrooms in the soil will be discussed in detail in the next sections, including soil myco-nanomanagement, soil myco-nanoremediation, and the role of mushrooms for soil improvement.