The article series ‘Women in plant science around the world’ marks the 30th anniversary of Trends in Plant Science, a milestone that invites us to reflect on three decades of shared discoveries, international collaborations, and the diverse voices that propel the field forward. By centring 30 of our women authors from 30 countries, we honour the global community that continues to advance plant science, and we hope to inspire the next generation of women researchers, as well as researchers from other still under-represented groups in plant science.

Models such as arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) have underpinned genomic and physiological research in plant science. Advances in genome sequencing, pangenomics, and genome editing have prompted claims of a ‘post-model’ era, with model–crops and crops such as rice and bread wheat combining agricultural relevance with experimental tractability. We argue that the ‘simplicity-to-complexity’ approach remains valid, although model systems have evolved. Arabidopsis remains indispensable for interpreting multi-omics data, testing developmental hypotheses, and generating mechanistic insights difficult to obtain in crops. Linking these strengths to model–crops adds translational value by bridging discovery and breeding, while niche models such as Brachypodium distachyon and legumes address grass cell wall biology and nitrogen fixation. Future progress depends on diverse species with complementary strengths across fundamental and applied plant biology.

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is a pivotal post-transcriptional regulator in plants, but most mechanistic studies derive from arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and annual crops. While core m6A machinery is conserved in plants, emerging studies in poplar, bamboo, and other tree species suggest that m6A modulates lignification and stress adaptation, likely reflecting perennial traits including long life cycle, secondary growth, seasonal developmental transitions. The major challenge of m6A research in trees is the shift from global m6A profiling to site-specific causal mechanism. New approaches like targets of RNA-binding proteins identified by editing, direct RNA sequencing, and dCas13-based programmable RNA epigenetic editors provide a practical resolution. In summary, this review extends m6A regulation from model plants to trees and highlights m6A’s potential for improving tree traits.

Sunlight is indispensable for photosynthesis but becomes hazardous when photon input exceeds the capacity of the photosynthetic machinery. A recent study by Shao and colleagues identifies protein condensates as a novel means of phytoprotection.

Originally developed in mammalian systems as a genome editing strategy without double-strand breaks, prime editing (PE) has been adapted for precise genome modifications. However, its deployment revealed key limitations, including reduced efficiency, strong locus dependency, low germline transmission, and somatic chimerism. Consequently, diverse PE variants have emerged, resulting in fragmented landscape of architectures with context-dependent and inconsistent performance. This review consolidates these advances and outlines emerging design principles behind plant PE systems. It evaluates optimization strategies at multiple levels, discusses their applications in monocots and eudicots, and highlights persistent bottlenecks and future directions, including AI-guided protein engineering and improved delivery strategies. These advances position PE as a rapidly evolving platform toward enabling precision breeding in plants.

Calcium (Ca2+) is an essential mineral for plants, functioning both as a nano- to micromolar signaling ion in gene regulation and, at millimolar levels, in nutrition—supporting structural integrity and enzyme activation. These functions depend on adequate fertilization. However, Ca2+ problems stem mainly from hydraulic access and local availability within specific tissues and compartments rather than bulk supply; thus, deficiency can occur even in Ca2+-rich soils due to soil immobilization and physiological constraints. Because Ca2+ is poorly phloem-mobile and moves mainly via transpiration-driven xylem flow, its distribution is uneven. By binding to cell walls, calcium also enhances plant stability and fruit firmness. Here we review deficiency symptoms, management strategies, developmental roles, soil interactions, detoxification, and recent fertilizer approaches.

Open chromatin plays vital roles in various biological processes by fine-tuning gene transcription. Currently, a plethora of high-throughput methodologies have been utilized to profile open chromatin sites (OCSs) genome-wide, including DNase I hypersensitivity sequencing (DNase-seq), MNase hypersensitivity sequencing (MH-seq), formaldehyde-assisted isolation of regulatory elements sequencing (FAIRE-seq), and assay for transposase accessible chromatin sequencing (ATAC-seq). However, each individual technique has its own pros and cons, thus, none of the aforementioned techniques can provide a complete overview of OCSs within the plant genome.

Chen et al. identified 132 whole-genome duplications (WGDs) clustered around environmental crises. We highlight how, over longer evolutionary timescales, ancient WGDs convergently retained MADS-box, MYB, WRKY and HSF transcription factors, building stress-adaptation networks. These insights guide climate-resilient crop improvement through comparative genomics and CRISPR engineering.

Citrus Huanglongbing (HLB), caused by the phloem-limited bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) and considered the most destructive citrus disease worldwide, has long been regarded as a typical bacterial infection. However, recent compelling evidence shows that CLas drives HLB through chronic effector-triggered immunity, not via direct pathogenicity, thereby redefining HLB as an immune-mediated disease (Huang et al.).

Plant Phenomics studies the phenotypic dynamics that form plant phenotypes by systematically measuring traits using phenotyping methods from the quantum to the ecosystem levels. It has emerged as an interdisciplinary field advancing sensing, computation, and plant biology. However, Plant Phenomics has lacked a unifying framework that integrates its community’s core concepts from the formal and life sciences. Central to this framework is the definition of the phenome as a set of phenes that govern phenotypic dynamics across all spatial and temporal scales of biological and ecological organization and in interaction with the environment. This paradigm moves beyond gene-centric views and recognizes the equal importance of all spatial and temporal scales in forming plant phenotypes, advancing Plant Phenomics as a data-driven discipline and its emerging profession, the plant phenomicist.

Changing nutrient availability is associated with growth trade-offs in crops. Recent studies in rice and maize reveal that such constraints can be uncoupled by modifying ubiquitin-dependent proteostatic systems that integrate nutrient and stress signalling pathways. This challenges the inevitability of trade-offs and highlights new strategies for breeding nutrient-efficient, stress-resilient crops.

Once viewed mainly as metabolic intermediates, small metabolites are increasingly recognized as spatially and temporally regulated signals that coordinate plant development and adaptation. Understanding these metabolite-based regulatory processes could reveal new strategies to improve crop resilience, productivity, and sustainability under changing environmental conditions.

Plants respond to spatially and temporally variable soil nutrients through root architectural plasticity, regulation of uptake and assimilation per root unit, and plant–soil–microbiome interactions. Although often viewed as complementary, these responses can also behave as compensatory strategies. Under non-optimal nutrient distributions, plants may invest either in greater root proliferation or in higher uptake capacity per root unit. We propose that this development–transport relationship should be understood as an optimization problem, rather than an additive response. Comparable morphology–physiology trade-offs occur in other resource-acquiring organs, including the gut and the lungs. Tuning or partially uncoupling these constraints could redefine crop ideotypes as dynamic combinations of root architecture, physiological elasticity, and controlled rhizosphere outsourcing, opening new routes to improve nutritional efficiencies.

Auxin and calcium (Ca2+) are central plant signals that coordinate growth, development, and responses to environmental cues. Typically studied as largely parallel pathways, they are now increasingly recognized as interconnected networks whose activities converge at multiple regulatory levels. Recent advances in live imaging, biosensors, optogenetics, and structural approaches have revealed that auxin can rapidly trigger Ca2+ influx from the apoplast via TRANSPORT INHIBITOR RESPONSE1 (TIR1)/AUXIN-SIGNALING F-BOX (AFB)-dependent signaling mechanisms and Ca2+ channels, presumably involving cyclic nucleotides produced by TIR1/AFB auxin receptors. Conversely, Ca2+ signals arising from mechanosensing, wounding, and environmental stress can modulate auxin transport, signaling, and transcriptional outputs. Together, these discoveries highlight a dynamic, reciprocal signaling axis where Ca2+ acts both downstream and upstream of auxin to shape growth, development, tropisms, and regeneration.

Castilleja (Orobanchaceae), commonly known as Indian paintbrush, is a genus of approximately 200 hemiparasitic species found primarily across the Americas. Long studied for its taxonomic complexity, vibrant floral displays, and ecological interactions with host plants, Castilleja has recently emerged as a versatile research system spanning parasitic biology, specialized metabolism, conservation genetics, and pharmacology. The availability of whole-genome sequencing is transforming the field, revealing expanded gene families involved in host recognition, enabling genomic species delimitation of cryptic taxa, and providing frameworks for mapping biosynthetic pathways of bioactive compounds, including iridoid glycosides and phenylethanoid glycosides. This review synthesizes advances across these disciplines and highlights how genomics serves as an integrative force connecting taxonomy, ecology, phytochemistry, and parasitic biology in this genus.

Angiosperms rose to ecological dominance through innovations that enhanced photosynthetic capacity and water-use efficiency. We propose that a pivotal, yet underappreciated, contributor was the hydroactive stomatal mechanism, an abscisic acid-mediated, metabolically driven control of guard-cell turgor. Unlike passive hydraulic responses to changes in water status, hydroactive regulation enables rapid, multisignal integration and minute-scale adjustment of stomatal aperture, synchronising carbon gain with hydraulic safety under fluctuating light, CO2, and evaporative demand. We argue that this water-status control module complemented other stomatal signalling pathways responsive to light, CO2, and metabolism, improving physiological coordination in dynamic environments. This perspective reframes stomata as decision-making nodes linking leaf anatomical evolution, physiological plasticity, and angiosperm diversification and offers a foundation for engineering climate-resilient crops under climate change.

Producing enough food to feed the world in an environmentally sustainable way represents a major challenge for humanity. It requires a bold paradigm that maximises options for the future. In contrast, organic farming has serious limitations, as it is based on an oversimplified assumption that natural substances are safe and artificial substances are unsafe. This approach severely constrains options for using synthetic inputs or new breeding techniques (NBTs) because they are perceived as ‘unnatural’. In this opinion article, we encourage a more objective evaluation of the contribution of synthetic inputs and NBTs to sustainability. We argue that crop production per se is not a natural situation and that it is important to keep options open for the future.

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is widely implicated in plants’ adaptive responses to salinity, regulating processes ranging from ionic homeostasis to antioxidant defense and is often described as a central signaling hub due to its interaction with core signaling pathways, such as Ca2+, reactive oxygen species, nitric oxide, and phytohormones. However, most evidence remains correlative and relies heavily on pharmacological interventions. This review critically examines the mechanistic gaps, causality, and specificity of H2S-mediated signaling in regulating salinity adaptive responses in plants. We argue that moving from phenomenological observations to causal mechanisms requires a strategic shift towards advanced genetic tools, in vivo dynamic imaging, synthetic biology, and systems-level interrogation. Addressing these challenges is essential to harness the translational potential of H2S signaling for improving crop resilience in saline environments.

The traditional model of plant–arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal coevolution, based solely on interactions between plants and AM fungi, became obsolete with the discovery of the critical roles that belowground microbiomes play in the function of mycorrhizal symbiosis. Based on insights into hyphosphere microbiota, we expand the plant–AM fungus–bacterium continuum into a multipartite AM fungal-orchestrated holobiont (H-AMF) framework, where AM fungi integrate plant roots with soil microbiota into a cross-kingdom ecological unit. A division of labor exists among plants, AM fungi, and hyphosphere microbes in the mycocentric H-AMF perspective. We summarize mechanisms by which AM fungi sustain cooperative relationships with plants and hyphosphere microbiota and propose holobiont-scale methodologies to advance understanding of plant–fungal–microbial interactions and their ecological functions.

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is a valuable proxy for ecosystem photosynthesis but is influenced by structural effects. Tang et al. show that normalizing SIF by absorbed photosynthetically active radiation reveals early drought-induced physiological declines before visible canopy changes, improving ecosystem drought monitoring.

Meeting food-security targets within environmental limits requires integrating genetic advances with data-driven design and adaptive management of crop populations as engineered systems. Herein, we propose a framework for AI-designed crop populations, in which AI-enabled approaches coordinate above- and belowground architecture with management to improve productivity, resource-use efficiency, and climate resilience. AI can act as an architect by coupling phenomics with process-based crop models to optimize multiobjective population designs and identify locally tailored configurations. It can also act as a regulator by integrating sensing, model-based prediction, and environmental feedback to guide in-season adaptation under climate variability. By linking trait innovation with population-level interactions and adaptive regulation, this framework offers a potentially transferable route for shifting the yield-efficiency frontier for sustainable intensification.

Plants require dynamic mechanisms of cellular organization to continuously adapt to fluctuating environmental conditions. Biomolecular condensation, which refers to nonstoichiometric assembly of macromolecules into membraneless compartments via phase separation, emerges as an essential regulatory strategy for plant development and stress responses. Unlike membrane-bound organelles, condensates can dynamically assemble/disassemble in response to different environmental cues. Increasing evidence indicates that versatile plant condensates associate with cellular membranes to regulate processes such as signal transduction, intracellular trafficking, organelle biogenesis, and gene expression. In this review, we summarize recent progress on representative condensates in association with the plant endomembrane system. We also highlight methodological advances, from multiscale in vivo characterization to in vitro reconstitution, which enable quantitative dissection of membrane–condensate interactions, with an emphasis on the biophysical principles governing them.

The article series ‘Women in plant science around the world’ marks the 30th anniversary of Trends in Plant Science, a milestone that invites us to reflect on three decades of shared discoveries, international collaborations, and the diverse voices that propel the field forward. By centring 30 of our women authors from 30 countries, we honour the global community that continues to advance plant science, and we hope to inspire the next generation of women researchers, as well as researchers from other still underrepresented groups in plant science.

Engineering rhizobial–plant nitrogen fixation in crops is a major goal in plant synthetic biology. We propose expanding efforts to plant–cyanobacterial symbioses as an alternative path. Targeting the earliest step of this partnership—likely conserved across its independent evolutionary origins—may offer a comparatively simple and promising strategy for enabling nitrogen-fixing crops.

Nitric oxide (NO) and melatonin (MT) are ubiquitous plant stress signals, yet their interplay is often reduced to simple antioxidant additivity or fixed synergy. In this review, we synthesize current evidence into an evidence-supported working framework in which NO–MT crosstalk functions as a reversible, stress-state-dependent signaling module governed by NO set-point control, redox-encoded post-translational modifications, and phase-, tissue-, and network-gated feedback. We distinguish three operational states: feed-forward activation, buffering restraint, and network integration. We further define minimum diagnostic criteria for state assignment, including NO kinetics, blockability, turnover/denitrosation capacity, and target-selective S-nitrosation. This framework clarifies when NO–MT coupling is causal, when it is buffered, and when it is redirected by broader reactive oxygen species/calcium/hormone/hydrogen sulfide.

Modern agriculture depends extensively on chemical inputs to optimize global food production. Supramolecular host–guest chemistry allows precise regulation of the delivery, stability, and spatiotemporal release of signaling molecules, thereby enabling crop improvement. Consequently, supramolecular agriculture has the potential to transform agrochemicals into targeted and efficient tools for sustainable farming.

The use of cover crops (CCs) is increasingly promoted to diversify cropping systems and advance agricultural sustainability. Yet, CC adoption can involve context-dependent trade-offs, including resource competition and elevated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this opinion article, we propose enhanced rock weathering (ERW) as a complementary strategy to improve biogeochemical synchrony within CC systems. By synthesizing emerging evidence, we show how CC–ERW interactions can synergistically enhance carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, GHG mitigation, and soil food-web functioning, mainly via root-driven weathering processes and soil feedbacks. We further outline opportunities for application across diverse agroecosystems and highlight key challenges for scaling, including weathering thresholds, potential metal risks, and governance constraints. Overall, harnessing the CC–ERW nexus offers a promising pathway toward climate-resilient and multifunctional agriculture.

Predicting how microbiota composition determines functional outputs remains a major challenge in rhizosphere ecology. Moran et al. show that physiological or environmental constraints organize high-diversity communities along dominant ecological axes, allowing microbiome functioning to become increasingly predictable. This perspective suggests that rhizosphere complexity itself may generate a predictable ecological organization.

High-throughput phenotyping (HTP) has advanced rapidly in recent decades, driven by technological developments across research and agricultural frameworks. Despite its success in measuring traits, it remains underutilized in field crop breeding programs. While the most critical and labor-intensive selection is conducted on heterozygous single plants or small plots at early stages, most phenotyping research focuses on stable genotypes grown in large plots. Here, we reconsider how HTP can be effectively integrated into breeding by accounting for methodologies, scale-related constraints, and technological limitations. Our focus remains on self-pollinated field crops, the predominant global food source. In light of climate change and food security needs, improving the integration of breeding and phenomics can accelerate genetic and technological advances in developing elite varieties.

The article series ‘Women in plant science around the world’ marks the 30th anniversary of Trends in Plant Science, a milestone that invites us to reflect on three decades of shared discoveries, international collaborations, and the diverse voices that propel the field forward. By centering 30 of our women authors from 30 countries, we honour the global community that continues to advance plant science, and we hope to inspire the next generation of women researchers, as well as researchers from other still underrepresented groups in plant science.

Phytohormones are predominantly produced in tissues that are spatially separated from their perceptive target tissues. Consequently, short- and long-distance phytohormone movement is a prerequisite for their function, and the underpinning transport mechanisms are crucial for phytohormone action. Strigolactones (SLs) are the most recently identified class of phytohormones. While SL synthesis and signaling pathways are well established, knowledge of active SL transport is scarce, limiting a system-level understanding of SL mechanisms and functions. Following the characterization of several SL transporters in the context of crop protection for two crops of global importance, we review our current knowledge on SL transport and highlight critical knowledge gaps with the aim of providing a conceptual framework for future studies.

The process by which plants synthesize the insecticidal compound nicotine remained unexpectedly elusive for many decades. In a new report, Chang et al. shed light on a five-component metabolon that catalyzes the final steps of the nicotine biosynthetic pathway, offering promising prospects for engineering plant resistance.

Abscisic acid (ABA) is a central regulator of plant stress responses and development, but its evolutionary history extends far beyond terrestrial plants (Embryophyta). Emerging phylogenomic evidence reveals that the plastidial ABA biosynthetic pathway originates from cyanobacteria—indicating that plastid-based ABA production predates terrestrialization. In contrast, the signaling framework evolved through stepwise modular innovations. The protein phosphate 2C–sucrose non-fermenting 1-related protein kinase2 core is ancient, whereas the canonical ABA-binding capacity of pyrabactin resistance/pyrabactin resistance 1-like/regulatory component of ABA receptors emerged during the evolution of land plants (Embryophyta) from ancestral Zygnematophyceae algae, with further refinement in angiosperms. By integrating noncanonical receptors, such as chloroplast Mg-chelatase H, we propose a continuous evolutionary trajectory of ABA from prokaryotes to embryophytes, highlighting how receptor innovation facilitated the transition to a terrestrial lifestyle.

The colonization of land by plants reshaped the global carbon cycle, with distinct functional contributions from different lineages. Mosses, a diverse group of nonvascular plants, inhabit environments ranging from arid rock surfaces to high-latitude peatlands and possess traits that strongly influence the global carbon cycle. Although small in stature, mosses frequently dominate primary production at higher latitudes and contribute to long-term carbon storage in peatland and tundra ecosystems. Emerging evidence indicates that moss physiological responses to elevated CO2 and changing climate conditions may alter ecosystem carbon balance in ways not currently captured by Earth system models. This review discusses the moss lifestyle, their historical and current influence on the carbon cycle, and their responses to elevated CO2 levels.

Plant science relies on collaborative, infrastructure-rich, and long-term research, yet evaluation remains dominated by simplified citation-based metrics. This mismatch shapes research culture and incentives. More responsible assessment should combine quantitative indicators with contribution-aware, context-sensitive approaches that better reflect how plant science is conducted.

Breeding for complex traits is constrained by limited predictive accuracy and transferability, particularly when nonadditive genetic effects and genotype-by-environment interactions dominate performance. In this review, we propose ‘Click Breeding’, a design-driven paradigm that shifts emphasis from ranking individual candidates to generating and stress-testing entire multigenerational breeding programs. In this framework, objectives and constraints are encoded as machine-readable plans; candidate strategies are evaluated via simulations that integrate genetics, physiology, and environment; and selected designs become traceable experimental workflows with governance checkpoints. Click Breeding connects genomic prediction, crop modeling, and laboratory automation into a coherent, auditable design cycle that complements the breeder’s judgment. We discuss conceptual foundations, assess technology maturity, and identify biological, computational, and regulatory challenges to making programmable crop design operational.

Seed dispersal is a key process in plant regeneration and persistence. While vertebrates such as birds and mammals are widely recognised as endozoochores, a growing body of evidence reveals that invertebrates also contribute meaningfully to seed dispersal through ingestion and defaecation. This review extends the prevailing vertebrate-centred paradigm, arguing that invertebrate gut passage is a recurrent, testable, and ecologically meaningful process. We synthesise current findings on invertebrate-mediated endozoochory across arthropods, gastropods, and other groups, highlighting their effectiveness, ecological relevance, and overlooked roles in shaping plant recruitment, especially in insular or fragmented systems. We adapt the seed dispersal effectiveness framework to invertebrate-mediated dispersal, identify key knowledge gaps, and call for systematic integration of invertebrates into seed-dispersal research and conservation planning.

Plants have evolved two primary innate immune strategies, pattern-triggered immunity and effector-triggered immunity, to prevent excessive microbial infection. As the ‘second genome’ of plants, microbiota also regulates the plant growth-immune tradeoff. In this opinion article, we propose that beneficial microbes expand the plant immune threshold by coordinately regulating above-ground and below-ground immune signaling. We integrate this concept into the existing framework of plant immune strategies to construct a novel model of plant immunity. Building upon this foundation, we introduce a novel perspective regarding dose-dependent immune responses. We propose that, in natural systems, non-pathogen–plant interactions should be evaluated not only based on the specific recognition of microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) but also by incorporating the dose-dependent effects of MAMPs into the assessment framework.

Plant digital twins (DTs) are dynamic, data-aware virtual representations that integrate plant structure, physiology, and environmental inputs to simulate plant function, growth, and performance. By combining process-based models, phenomics data, and environmental states in a continuous feedback loop linking physical and virtual plants, DTs offer a novel approach for investigating complex biological systems. In this opinion article, we outline the conceptual foundations of DTs and how they offer new opportunities to bridge the genotype-to-phenotype gap and aid in crop improvement. Despite their promise, major challenges remain in DT development, scalability, and accessibility. Addressing these challenges will be critical for enabling the broad adoption of DTs as transformative tools for accelerating plant science research and crop improvement.

Phosphatidic acid (PA) functions as a dynamic second messenger in response to multiple stresses in plants. Recent insights into the mechanisms of diacylglycerol kinase-derived PA signaling have expanded its functional profiles while leaving potential avenues for research and key knowledge gaps, which will be discussed in this forum article.

Assay for transposase-accessible chromatin sequencing (ATAC-seq) is widely used to profile open chromatin regions that are depleted of nucleosomes and accessible to transcription factor binding in plants. Although transcription dynamics provide a direct measure of gene regulatory activity, ATAC-seq signals, which are largely enriched at promoters, cannot reliably identify actively transcribed genomic regions. Kethoxal-assisted single-stranded DNA sequencing (KAS-seq) overcomes this limitation by profiling genome-wide single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) through N3-kethoxal-assisted labeling, thereby capturing the dynamics of transcriptionally engaged RNA polymerase II (Pol II) and the precise footprints of ongoing transcription.

The article series ‘Women in plant science around the world’ marks the 30th anniversary of Trends in Plant Science, a milestone that invites us to reflect on three decades of shared discoveries, international collaborations, and the diverse voices that propel the field forward. By centring 30 of our women authors from 30 countries, we honour the global community that continues to advance plant science, and we hope to inspire the next generation of women researchers, as well as researchers from other still underrepresented groups in plant science.

Climate change is creating increasingly severe and unpredictable conditions for agriculture, leading to diverse future scenarios. This poses a challenge for modern plant breeding, which has relied heavily on prediction models trained with past experimental data. These models predict the performance of existing and new genotypes across environments and have increased the effective size, scale, and speed of plant breeding programmes [1,2]. However, the diversity of production conditions is hindering reliable predictions of plant performance.

Although symmetry shapes body plans across plants and animals—from specialized cell types to organs and whole organisms—its genetic basis, particularly for bilateral symmetry, remains poorly understood. In animals, most of which are bilaterally symmetric, symmetry-breaking genes have been identified that direct left–right asymmetries, such as heart positioning in vertebrates. In plants, genes controlling transitions between radial and bilateral symmetry in flowers have been characterized in some clades. Here, we review current knowledge and unresolved questions about the genetics of symmetry, focusing on bilaterality. Using examples from animal body plan development and plant organ morphogenesis (leaves and flowers), we highlight a key paradox: bilateral symmetry-breaking genes are known, yet genes specifically dedicated to bilateral symmetry establishment remain unidentified.

Cell states alone rarely resolve woody developmental continua. To recover developmental continuity, Wei et al. integrated single-cell, single-nucleus, and spatial transcriptomics in poplar xylem. Their study highlights a broader principle for forestry: cell-resolved atlases become explanatory when interpreted in an anatomical context and linked to developmental continuity and experimental validation.

An upstream open reading frame-encoded peptide mediates rapid systemic stomatal immunity by moving from infected leaves to distal guard cells, where a receptor complex triggers Ca2+-dependent vacuolar remodeling and stomatal closure (Liu et al.). In this article, we discuss this concept, its limitations, and future implications for immune network integration.

Phototropins are blue-light receptors that regulate diverse light-driven processes, including phototropism, chloroplast movement, stomatal opening, leaf positioning, and leaf flattening, all of which optimise photosynthesis and promote plant growth. These autophosphorylating serine/threonine kinases initiate signalling from the plasma membrane by altering protein phosphorylation patterns. Nearly 3 decades of research have uncovered numerous phosphorylation events pivotal for distinct phototropin-mediated responses. Here, we summarise major advances in understanding phototropin autophosphorylation, the identification of substrate proteins, and how phosphorylation at specific sites, collectively termed the phototropin phosphocode, controls protein function. We also discuss the emerging role of protein phosphatases in modulating this phosphocode and the potential to engineer these regulatory mechanisms to enhance photosynthetic performance and plant biomass.

Remote sensing using uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) and AI, particularly machine learning and deep learning, is increasingly applied to crop pest and disease detection. However, the real-world robustness of these models remains uncertain. We conducted a meta-analysis of 121 UAV-based studies published between 2018 and 2024, examining dataset construction and model validation practices. We found that 89% of studies lacked truly independent test datasets, resulting in inflated performance estimates and limited generalisability. Only 11% evaluated models on independent fields, and successful transferability was uncommon. Our analysis identifies key methodological limitations underlying this issue and provides recommendations to improve robustness, reproducibility, and practical relevance. Overall, current validation practices require substantial improvement to ensure reported model performance reflects field-level applicability.