Theme issue: Crops under stress

They May 29 issue of Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B. similarly addresses the pressing questions of how crop plants will continue to feed the world in spite of the rapidly changing climate. This issue covers some of the same topics as the Science special issue on heat stress but goes beyond heat to cover drought stress, salinity stress, and flooding. There are too many outstanding review articles to mention them all here, but I’ll draw your attention to a few. Steve Long wrote an excellent review on “Needs and opportunities to future-proof crops and the use of crop systems to mitigate atmospheric change,” in which he points to clearly effective strategies to improve crop performance that are thwarted by insufficient public funding in crop breeding and the need for private funding to produce a quick return-on-investment, strikingly illustrated by the differences in yield growth in US grown maize versus US grown sorghum or Nigerian-grown cassava (this is a must-read article). Ainsworth et al. address the perennial question of whether crops and CO₂ are friends or foes, looking closely at how increased atmospheric CO₂ can both increase yields and decrease nutritional quality. Other reviews cover growth-promoting microbes, machine learning, stomatal function and more. It is an excellent collection of forward-looking articles. (Summary by Mary Willams @PlantTeaching.bsky.social) Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2025/380/1927