Perspectives

This perspective highlights the new species-independent analytical tools with a focus on plant nanosensors and portable Raman spectroscopy, and evaluates their applications in agriculture, such as detecting plant stresses and monitoring crop physiology.

Genebanks are repositories of genetic diversity, and getting the seeds to the facilities depends on committed researchers going, if necessary, into war-torn areas in order to save and transport their resources. This narrative recounts one such journey and the system that underpins these facilities and individuals.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 encompasses targets ranging from the eradication of hunger and malnutrition to ensuring a sustainable food production system. Conflicts between these goals gives rise to gaps in our understanding that hamper attempts at evidence-based policy-making.

This Perspective discusses the genetic approaches to study auxin signalling and the limitations due to redundancy of the major components of this pathway, namely ARFs and Aux/IAAs. The authors make a case for a renewal of genetic analyses using multiple mutants.

One consequence of climate change is an increased frequency of flood and drought episodes. This Perspective explores how water availability regulates root architecture and water transport capacity (hydraulics), from sensing mechanisms to novel responses.

This Perspective summarizes recent advances made on in planta haploid induction systems and how these advances contribute to our understanding of plant reproduction and innovations of plant breeding.

Integrating natural selection and other organizing principles into next-generation vegetation models could render them more theoretically sound and useful for earth system applications and modelling climate impacts.

Climate change will not only challenge current crop modeling techniques, but require new types of models that can account for and operate at multiple scales to measure adaptation and resilience.

Genetically modified cotton has been used in India for 20 years, but while yield increases have received vast attention, this Perspective provides a comprehensive overview of both the inputs and outputs that correspond with those yields.

This Perspective assesses the opportunities and challenges for synthetic biology in revolutionizing agriculture, and highlights the resources and approaches we need to remove the barriers and propel another Green Revolution.

Herbacious grain annuals in the mid-Holocene period were typically so hard to forage and eat that their use by humans was seen as a ‘last resort’, but this Perspective argues that a switch from animal to human dispersal allowed for domestication into the crops that became the foundation for societies around the world.

The gametophyte phase is extremely reduced in angiosperms, reduced to a few haploid cells in flowers. This Perspective discusses recent studies in Marchantia polymorpha that have identified conserved components of gametogenesis.

The severe threat of weeds to agriculture and ecosystems necessitates management practices on the scale of landscapes. This Perspective uses four case studies to examine the best practices for this collective dilemma.

A Perspective summarizes advances in the research of plant diversity, and discusses how big data resources and new technologies, such as analytical and integrating tools, are revolutionizing our views of plant diversification and guiding conservation.

There are multiple strategies to fortify crop nutrition and support global food security and sustainable agriculture. Here the authors propose to increase the diversity of crops by devoting more efforts to studying minor crops that are naturally stress resistant.

Traditional knowledge of medicinal plants is rich and varied, with uses differing between cultures. Cultural evolutionary theory, particularly phylogenetic comparative methods, provide a framework to investigate continuity and change in medicinal plant knowledge.

Microbial communities are not only of great importance in the human gut, but also play irreplaceable roles in sustaining plant growth and functions. In this Perspective, strategies to optimize microbiome usage in agroecosystems are proposed.

This Perspective discusses recent progress in base editing, as well as potential applications in research and biotechnology.

To reduce climate warming we must stop adding CO₂ to the atmopshere, and develop approaches for removing it. Adding crushed, fast-reacting silicate rocks to croplands could improve productivity, restore soil quality and reduce atmospheric CO₂.

Programmed cell death is essential but differently regulated in animals and plants. In this Perspective, the features of plant apoptotic-like cell death are reassessed to highlight the similarities between animal and plant programmed cell death.