Editorials

While the pandemic creates a ‘new normal’, many political, environmental and economic dynamics that were concerning us before 2020 have become all the more serious under the cover of COVID-19’s long shadow.

Ending hunger is a major objective of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. A cross-journal collection of articles takes a systematic look at what we might already know about achieving it.

In the Gospel According to Matthew Chapter seven, Verse five, Jesus says “first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye”. We should remember this entreaty before too casually casting accusations of ‘plant blindness’.

The motto of the Royal Society, “nullius in verba”, enjoins scientists to ‘take nobody’s word for it’. Its call to trust nothing unless it can be replicated is no less relevant now than it was 360 years ago.

The last three months have been a dispiriting experience for most plant scientists. But this period of collective isolation is demonstrating the usefulness of alternative ways to come together as a community.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been cutting us all off from the social aspects of human community for several months. High time we checked in on our plant science colleagues to see how they are faring.

Disease is often said to be a great leveller, striking the rich and poor alike. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into stark contrast the inequalities inherent in our food systems.

Scale can be as problematic in genetics as it is in microscopy or astronomy. Luckily, pan-genomics is here to tackle the complexity of genetics on the large scale.

Epidemic diseases are not a new phenomenon, but easy access to transport in the modern world has accelerated their spread. Perhaps some botanical understanding can help slow them down.

Plant diseases have brought misery and suffering to human populations across the world and across millennia. Declaring 2020 the International Year of Plant Health will hopefully raise awareness of this ancient yet very modern threat.

Now we are volume six — a perfect opportunity to reflect on some of the highlights, personal and professional, of the past five years.

Plant blindness is a pernicious force, even affecting the coming festive season. How can we increase the plant-based content of a well-known list of Christmas gifts?

The past month has seen a couple of significant dates in the science calendar: one an annual event, the other an anniversary. At least one of these has far less to do with plant research than perhaps it ought to.

In the Amazon basin, farmers and ranchers contest land use with environmental and indigenous groups. Does that make widespread fires the inevitable ‘new normal’?

Scientific journals are entirely dependent on the multitude of researchers prepared to spend precious time on peer review. Are we asking too much, especially when there is so much else they could be doing?

Literature is full of descriptions of future utopias and dystopias, but tomorrow’s tomorrows are too important to be left to fiction to consider. What qualities will be needed in plants in the coming decades?

In supporting the 1909 land reform bill, Winston Churchill called land “by far the greatest of monopolies”, being the source of all wealth, strictly limited and fixed. One hundred and ten years later, land usage is again under scrutiny.

Plants are different and amazingly diverse. We should not be embarrassed to study them independently of their many uses.

Cryo-electron microscopy is currently one of the most productive structural techniques, especially for large protein complexes such as photosystems. This success is built on a very long history of technological advances.

In June 2019, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations will elect a new Director General, an individual who will be central to global development for the next decade.