Comment

Currently, hunger affects nearly 12 per cent of the world’s population — 4 per cent more than in 2015, when the United Nations launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. If all scientific knowledge and technological innovation in crop development were readily available and globally adopted, could zero hunger have been achieved by 2030? Most people recognize the potential for agricultural biotechnology to contribute to food security. However, there has been limited application and adoption of new crop varieties in countries that are disproportionately affected by malnutrition and food insecurity.

Genome editing provides a unique opportunity to create produce benefiting consumers, but success depends on risk-proportional regulation. Existing seedless fruit varieties such as watermelon, mandarin oranges and grape are strongly preferred by consumers and support healthy diets without pre-market regulatory approvals required for commercialization. Replicating the seedless trait in other fruits is a promising way to increase consumption. Here we compare the differential treatment by various regulatory systems of identical products made by inserting an ancient seedless allele into muscadine grape (Vitis rotundifolia) using traditional breeding or templated or non-templated genome editing tools.

The failure of Liberica coffee as a global crop plant by the turn of the twentieth century was due to a number of factors, including the inappropriate selection of material for global dissemination. Renewed interest in this species, particularly in the excelsa variant, is evident across the coffee supply chain. In a warming world, and in an era beset with supply chain disruption, Liberica coffee could re-emerge as a major crop plant.

We identified the function of mangrove ecosystems that underpin ecosystem services, their responses to extreme weather and climatic events, and their role as crucial social-ecological systems as important paradigms shaping mangrove research now and in times to come. Since themes around functions and connectivity, ecological resilience to extreme events, and human–environment interactions are likely to be important underpinnings for other coastal and terrestrial ecosystems too, this paper aims to promote discussion within and beyond the mangrove research community and to help the broader plant science field in viewing and understanding the issue of safeguarding mangrove forests for the future.

At a time when food security is being threatened by climate change and population growth, regulatory systems must be designed to encourage innovation through all available technological means. Proposed changes to the concept of essential derivation will classify all mono-parental varieties as essentially derived, threatening the use of new breeding technologies to deliver crop improvement.

Over 100 of the world’s leaders pledged to end deforestation by 2030 at the COP26 climate summit in a bid to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. The REDD+ scheme is the best hope to achieving this target.

Machine-learning algorithms for protein structure prediction can now generate models directly from sequences. However, photosynthetic assemblies represent a challenge due to additional levels of complexity arising from their multi-protein nature and presence of cofactors.

Hybrid diploid breeding is a radical innovation that promises to revolutionize breeding practices in potato, the world’s third-largest food crop. Yet concerted efforts are needed to ensure this innovation can be harnessed for food security.

On 13 June 2021, the people of Switzerland voted on two popular initiatives that aimed to introduce stricter pesticide policies. Both initiatives were rejected, but the political and societal debate led to large changes in governmental and industry policies.

The battle between humans and plant pests is as old as agriculture, but the movement of pests as a consequence of human activities has been exacerbated only recently. International research collaboration is increasingly important to tackle pests causing serious damage to economies.

Although the ‘rebound effect’ is well established in environmental economics, the sometimes paradoxical effects of yield increase are rarely questioned within the plant science community. Acknowledging the curse of efficiency can help us to reframe our societal goals from performance at all cost to resilience.

Keeping pace with food demand and climate change requires continuous genetic improvement of crops that, in turn, relies on the availability of genetic resources. Access to these resources is complicated by the need to establish benefit-sharing arrangements when accessing and using such genetic resources.

Humans have been using biodiversity for hundreds of thousands of years, but at no time in our history has it been more crucial to accelerate our exploration of the useful properties of the species that inhabit the world around us.

Extinct, or just extinct in the wild? Plants lost from in situ habitat, but represented in seed banks, are labelled extinct despite the potential for restoration. A change in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List definition of extinct in the wild is needed to improve the status and prospects of threatened plant species.

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation requires 75% of threatened plant species conserved ex situ by 2020. Currently, ex situ conservation focuses on conventional seed banking, yet this method is unsuitable for many threatened species. The 75% target is unattainable without urgent investment into alternative techniques.

Like all living organisms, without exception, plants integrate many external signals to adapt to their environment and increase their fitness. Is this a proof of intelligence? It depends on the meaning of the word; and it really does not matter.

Next-generation sequencing technologies have significantly changed the scope of ancient plant DNA research, moving from analysis of a few loci to generation of ancient genomes. Future research could refine our understanding of plant evolution and adaptation, and provide information for conservation, crop breeding and food security.

Diversity in plant genomes remains largely unexplored. The 10,000 Plant Genome Sequencing Project is a landmark effort to catalogue plant genomic variation, representing a major step in understanding the tree of life. The project offers new opportunities to study biological processes and address fundamental research questions.

The recently published reference genome of Aegilops tauschii provides new insights into the originator of the D genome donor of hexaploid wheat. This will be a foundation for exploring the genomic diversity underpinning adaptive traits in wheat, and ultimately advance wheat improvement efforts.

Modern plant biology relies heavily on genetic sequence information from species with a diversity of origins. Could proposed changes to the terms of use of this digital sequence information threaten the development of new crop varieties and improvements in global agriculture?