Entries by Mary Williams

Review: Genomic tools and breeding tools to design salinity-smart food crops

Most food crops are relatively intolerant to soil salinity, yet globally soils are becoming increasingly salinized. This excellent review by Raza et al. pulls together the myriad approaches that are being used to develop salinity-smart crops. It starts with an overview of how soil salinity affects crops plants and some of the mechanisms that facilitate […]

Transgenerational epigenetic cold tolerance in rice

As rice has expanded northwards from its center of origin, it has been exposed to deeper and longer periods of cold. Male fertility is particularly sensitive to cold. Song et al. designed a clever strategy to study mechanisms of cold tolerance. They subjected meiotic-stage cold-sensitive rice varieties to cold and at each generation selected panicles […]

Plant Science Research Weekly: June 6, 2025

Review: Gene discovery, from Arabidopsis to crops This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first genome sequence of a plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, (see https://doi.org/10.1038/35048692). As this review by Bevan et al. observes, this exciting accomplishment was met with some skepticism by those who felt that it was not likely to contribute […]

Untangling cell-specific root responses to stress

Single-cell technologies have brought our understanding of complex tissues to whole new levels. Previous methods showed how gene expression in tissues changes over time or after challenges, whereas now these patterns can be assigned to specific cell types, revealing intricate, elegant processes. Here, Zhu and Hsu et al. examined rice root responses to heterogenous soil […]

A roadmap to get fruit and veg back on the table

We all know that a healthy body requires a diet rich in fruits and vegetables., yet the vast majority of people living in the US don’t eat the recommended daily amounts of these plant foods. This deficit, and the accompanying over-reliance on grain-based and ultraprocessed foods, means that America is experiencing a health epidemic of […]

Plant Science Research Weekly: May 23, 2025

Review: Lost in translation – lessons from concepts that don’t translate from Arabidopsis The May 2025 issue of The Plant Cell has a focus on Arabidopsis and how this simple model plant has had an outsized impact on our understanding of pretty much everything botanical (and beyond). Alongside several articles highlighting this impact, this review […]