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Our hungry world relies on a small army of crop varieties that have been developed over the past few decades. They have been bred to grow faster, sweeter and bigger, often at the expense of their nutritional value. Looking into the history of these crops could provide a solution.
To ensure that political and societal decisions safeguard the sustainability of humanity, it is vital that the work of plant biologists is understood by policymakers and the public alike. Perhaps then issues could be discussed directly, not through the potentially biased lens of the media.
The world's ecosystems are losing biodiversity fast. A satellite mission designed to track changes in plant functional diversity around the globe could deepen our understanding of the pace and consequences of this change, and how to manage it.
In an attempt to ensure high standards of transparency and reproducibility, Nature Plants is introducing a plant-specific reporting checklist for authors — and making it a requirement for all refereed papers.
Nature Plants has now completed a full year of publication as a journal aimed at all the plant sciences. What better time to assess the extent to which this goal has been met?