For crop breeders, the deceptively simple question “is it better?” hides a web of consequences when extra chromosome sets are added (polyploidy), and this perspective pulls those pieces together. What, exactly, do additional gene copies and larger cells buy in terms of yield, quality, and resilience?…

Soybean is one of the most important cash crops for global food and feed, valued for its high-quality plant oil and protein. Centuries of domestication and breeding have narrowed its genetic diversity, leaving current cultivars vulnerable to climate change. To address this, Zhu and colleagues generated…

Plants possess the remarkable ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissues, a trait that underpins both their survival in nature and their utility in modern biotechnology. This intrinsic regenerative capacity forms the basis of tissue culture systems used for species preservation, breeding, and crop…

Halophytes are plants that have evolved ways to adapt to high-salt environments that can be toxic to non-halophytes. Some halophytes prevent salt uptake, some sequester it in disposable bladders, and some extrude it from salt glands. In a new study, Mai et al. studied Nolana mollis, a salt-tolerant plant…

Lichens are complex assemblies that are composed of at least two organisms, a fungus (the mycobiont) and a photosynthetic partner, the photobiont. Lichen lifestyles have emerged several times, and the photobiont can be either prokaryotic cyanobacteria or eukaryotic algae. Recently, Tagirdzhanova et al.…

I love learning about the many molecular adaptations that allowed plants to adapt to life on land, and particularly have enjoyed sharing the iconic micrograph from Remy et al (1994) that shows a 400 year old arbuscular mycorrhiza of the fungus Glomeromycotina  inside a cell of Aglaophyton major. Now,…

Review: A complete guide to metabolomics This review by Rai et al., part of a focus collection on metabolism, comprehensively covers the role of metabolomics in plant biology: its history, its tools and techniques, and its impact. As the authors point out, metabolomics bridge the gap between genotype…

Plant photosynthetic machinery can easily be overwhelmed by strong sunlight. Therefore, plants developed a set of processes called Non-Photochemical Quenching, a safety valve that dissipates excess light energy as heat. In a recent review, van Amerongen and Croce synthesize decades of often contradictory…