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Future crop breeding needs to consider future soils

Nature Plants volume 11, pages 939–941 (2025)Cite this article

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Modern crop breeding and seed certification agencies ignore the known spatial heterogeneity of soils and develop cultivars to thrive in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ soil environment. Neglecting the evolving dynamics of soils substantially undermines the capacity of new genotypes to deliver optimal yield and stress resilience, and requires urgent consideration in future plant breeding programmes.

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Fig. 1: Annual research productivity of plant breeding and its proportional focus on soils and soil physical properties.

Data availability

The source data for Fig. 1 are provided in the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

S.R., S.J.M., M.J.B., S.G. and M.J.H. are funded by BBSRC Project Delivering Sustainable Wheat (BB/X018806/1) and (BB/X011003/1). M.J.B., S.J.M. and B.K.P. acknowledge BBSRC BreakThru (BB/W008874/1) and M.J.B. acknowledges ERC Synergy grant (101118769-HYDROSENSING). B.K.P. acknowledges support from UKRI Frontiers Research (ERC StG, EP/Y036697/1).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington, UK

    Sajjad Raza, Bipin K. Pandey, Malcolm J. Bennett & Sacha J. Mooney

  2. Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, UK

    Malcolm J. Hawkesford

  3. John Innes Centre, Norwich, Norfolk, UK

    Simon Griffiths

Authors
  1. Sajjad Raza
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  2. Bipin K. Pandey
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  3. Malcolm J. Hawkesford
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  4. Simon Griffiths
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  5. Malcolm J. Bennett
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  6. Sacha J. Mooney
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sajjad Raza.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information

Nature Plants thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

The file contains queries that were used for data search and a table which outlines the steps involved in data selection.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Annual publications data of plant breeding and its share on soils and soil physical properties

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Raza, S., Pandey, B.K., Hawkesford, M.J. et al. Future crop breeding needs to consider future soils. Nat. Plants 11, 939–941 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-01977-z

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