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Mitochondrial genes in most crops are inherited maternally. In this issue of Nature Plants, Gonzalez-Duran et al. report that mitochondrial genes can be inherited from both parents.
The false smut fungus attacks rice by secreting a ‘weapon’ that targets a key protein in the plant’s flowers. This single move simultaneously stops the rice from making grains and shuts down its natural immune defences. The discovery of this strategy offers an opportunity to develop disease-resistant rice in the future.
Cereal protein biofortification can improve nutrition while maintaining yield and lowering environmental impact. This Review shows how genetics and breeding can enhance protein quality in staple cereals to support healthier and more sustainable diets.
Heat stress threatens wheat productivity, necessitating genetic solutions for heat stress tolerance. We identified TaHST2, a key heat stress tolerance regulator, and demonstrated that intronic variations and epigenetic modifications silence TaHST2 in heat-tolerant wheat, probably as an adaptive consequence of hexaploidization and domestication.
A computational model based on early inflorescence development in wheat and rice has revealed how the timing of primordia initiation and meristem transition jointly shapes architectural diversity. It not only predicted independent mechanisms for ‘paired spikelet’ formation but also guided the identification of RA2-D, a gene that accelerates heading and can boost grain yield.
We identify ZmMYB127 as a central regulator of maize endosperm filling, which executes dual transcriptional activities to coordinate development of the aleurone layer and nutrient accumulation in grain. This coordination enhances grain yield and quality, underscoring ZmMYB127 as a potential target for improving maize breeding.
A multilayered pangenomic resource for Sorghum bicolor, integrating an improved reference genome, a representative 33-accession pangenome and a global panel of nearly 2,000 lines, establishes a powerful platform for trait discovery and genetic improvement.
Potato is clonally propagated, with a complex genome and a challenging breeding system. Genome-enabled approaches have shed light on the molecular genetic basis of key traits, thereby enabling accelerated breeding strategies and bringing potato in line with other key food crops such as maize and rice that exploit heterosis.
Plants close their stomata to block pathogen entry, but how this defence is supported at the organelle level remains unclear. Our study reveals that immune signalling promotes MIRO1-dependent mitochondrial fusion in guard cells, supporting mitochondrial functional homeostasis that enables effective stomatal closure.
A new winter-rotation oilseed crop has been generated from a freeze-tolerant wild field pennycress by de novo domestication, reducing its glucosinolate and erucic acid contents, as well as its weediness, without a growth and yield penalty. Commercialization has resulted in a low-carbon-intensity intermediate crop, demonstrating a great potential for de novo domestication to create a new crop rotation paradigm for the optimized utilization of agricultural resources.
Human-driven native extinctions and alien naturalizations are reshaping global tree diversity. Analysing traits and environmental niches of more than 31,000 species, we showed a global shift towards fast-growing, high-resource-use trees and that slow-growing species face a rising extinction risk, findings that have major implications for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
The OsLHT1a allele of the amino acid transporter gene OsLHT1 in the Oryza sativa spp. japonica rice variety, which differs from the OsLHT1b allele in the Oryza sativa spp. indica variety, enhances organic nitrogen use efficiency in high-organic-matter soils through recruitment of a specific rhizosphere microbiota that boosts amino acid production and uptake.
A genomic analysis reveals how Kalanchoe succulents, known as the ‘mother of thousands’, reinvent propagation. By losing meristem activity regulators, amplifying developmental genes and opening up chromatin, these plants sprout new plantlets from their leaves, with implications for plant totipotency and crop engineering.
The florigen activation complex drives the pivotal transition from vegetative growth to flowering in response to inductive daylengths. Recent work, which incorporates novel components and reveals the multifunctionality of established members of the complex, now uncovers a multi-layered assembly mechanism and an unexpected spatiotemporal distribution of the complex.
Living plant collections hold an immense wealth of plant diversity and have critical educational, scientific and conservation roles. This Perspective examines current data management practices of living collections and advocates for higher data standards and a robust and inclusive global data ecosystem.
We reveal the structural basis of transport activity and substrate selectivity of LciA, a key bicarbonate channel that is part of the CO2-concentrating mechanism in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Using these insights, we engineered formate–nitrite transporter (FNT) family proteins to achieve or enhance bicarbonate transport, thereby expanding the toolkit for boosting plant photosynthesis.
Detailed study of the role of plant canopy architecture on crop yield and N2O emissions remains limited. Our study reveals that a clumped canopy architecture in crops such as rice, wheat, maize and soybean can simultaneously improve yields and reduce nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, thus representing a promising strategy to enhance agricultural productivity and sustainability globally.
Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analyses map transcriptional networks during plant development, but rare cell populations or expression values for several genes are often missing. As the origin or position of cells correlates with specific gene expression markers, we spatially resolved gene expression during barley meristem development by integrating a scRNA-seq dataset from cells with unknown position with spatial transcriptomics. This dataset is publicly available through the online web-based BARVISTA application.
This study uses single-cell spatial transcriptomics to explore the early interactions between potato leaf cells and the pathogen Phytophthora infestans, revealing cellular heterogeneity in gene expression at the infection site and providing a valuable resource for future enhancement of potato disease resistance.
