Climate change is reshaping the landscape of plant research, necessitating a fundamental shift in experimental designs and research priorities. As the effects of climate change become increasingly pronounced, researchers are compelled to adapt their methodologies to address the challenges posed by a…

Try asking your colleague why they think the present decade of the 21st century needs better policies to shape opportunities for women in science? We did and the answer was clear - society thinks males are inherently adept at being leaders, despite evidence proving otherwise (Novotney, 2024). Throughout…

Resolving phytohormone response zones by fluorescent reporters Phytohormones such salicylic acid (SA), ethylene (ET), and jasmonic acid (JA) are known to regulate plant immunity, but their spatial dynamics has remained unclear. Using a set of fluorescent reporters in Arabidopsis, Calabria et al.…

Phytohormones such salicylic acid (SA), ethylene (ET), and jasmonic acid (JA) are known to regulate plant immunity, but their spatial dynamics has remained unclear. Using a set of fluorescent reporters in Arabidopsis, Calabria et al. resolved the hormonal responses upon Fusarium oxysporum infection at…

This exciting paper by Chen, Qi, Zou et al. adds a new twist to the story of auxin. Until this work, the current model for how auxin mediates transcriptional changes has been that auxin (IAA) binds to TIR1, a ubiquitin ligase, when interacts with and causes the degradation of Aux/IAA repressor proteins,…

A pan-genome has been assembled for the Solanum genus, which contains many diverse and economically important crops including potato, tomato, and African eggplant. Genomes were assembled for 22 species, and genes were predicted based on previous reference genomes and from RNA sequences across multiple…

Soybean, originally domesticated in China, is widely recognized for its high protein and oil content, making it a crucial crop for human consumption, animal feed, and biofuel production. Despite its economic and agricultural significance, research tools and genomic resources for soybean have lagged behind…

Microbial pesticides are widely applied to improve crop production, but the active molecules are largely unexplored. In a recent study, Mohamed et al., identified an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) from crop-associated microbes and showed its inhibitory effects on various phytopathogens. The authors first…