Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-04-30DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.009
Mingzhuo Li, Aditi Dey Poonam, Qingshang Wei
{"title":"Microneedle-assisted molecular delivery in plants.","authors":"Mingzhuo Li, Aditi Dey Poonam, Qingshang Wei","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Traditional agricultural delivery methods, such as foliar spray and soil application, suffer from low uptake efficiency, environmental contamination, and short-term effects, whereas nanoparticle-mediated delivery platforms face issues of stability, cytotoxicity, and regulatory concerns. Recently, microneedle (MN) technology has emerged as a promising alternative for precise, minimally invasive delivery of agrochemicals and biomolecules. In this opinion article, we explore the evolution of MN-based delivery systems in agriculture. We discuss the structure-function relationships of MNs (solid, hollow, dissolving, and coated MNs) and highlight their applications in nutrient delivery, pathogen control, and genome editing for plants. We conclude with challenges and future directions for integrating MNs into precision agriculture to improve crop productivity, sustainability, and genetic manipulation.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1151-1163"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147821138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-05-07DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.015
Zequn Fan, Hiba Shahgaleh, Shiming Ding
{"title":"Nitrous oxide mitigation in hybrid maize mediated by Massilia.","authors":"Zequn Fan, Hiba Shahgaleh, Shiming Ding","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.015","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.015","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Massilia presents a functional paradox in maize heterosis: its enrichment correlates with lower nitrous oxide (N<sub>2</sub>O) emissions, yet it lacks reduction genes. We propose that Massilia functions as an ecological hub, coordinating the rhizosphere microbiome and engineering the microenvironment to suppress N<sub>2</sub>O emissions. This paradigm guides new strategies for breeding climate-smart crops.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1147-1150"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147857316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-05-12DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.026
Mitesh Khisti, Nese Sreenivasulu
{"title":"Balancing yield, quality, and nutrition through fine-tuned brassinosteroid signalling.","authors":"Mitesh Khisti, Nese Sreenivasulu","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.026","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.026","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Increasing evidence indicates that brassinosteroids (BRs) signalling influences not only yield but also crop quality and nutritional attributes that underpin consumer preference and food security. This review synthesises recent insights into BR-mediated signalling networks controlling panicle architecture, grain or fruit size and shape, influencing yield, quality, and nutrition-related traits across cereals and horticultural crops. We highlight how targeted manipulation of BR signalling components, together with their interactions with other hormonal pathways and natural variation, can be tapped to address future nutritional targets across crops. By consolidating mechanistic and translational advances, this review provides a conceptual framework to guide the rational exploration of BR signalling for the simultaneous improvement of yield, quality, and nutritional value in major crop species.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1231-1241"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147933634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-05-14DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.016
Liangliang Li, Lam-Son Phan Tran, Weiqiang Li
{"title":"Dihydroxyhexanoic acid: a barrier molecule for fungal turgor.","authors":"Liangliang Li, Lam-Son Phan Tran, Weiqiang Li","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.016","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.016","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Plant pathogenic fungi rely on appressoria to penetrate the host surface, a core mechanism for agricultural diseases. A recent study by Kumakura et al. identified 3,5-dihydroxyhexanoic acid-derived polymers as crucial for regulating appressorial turgor generation, alongside melanin, providing a broad-spectrum target for developing crop antifungal agents for disease management.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1138-1140"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147942996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-05-16DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.020
Jinping Zhao, Yanxia Ding, Junqi Song
{"title":"A pathogen-exclusive nutrition niche.","authors":"Jinping Zhao, Yanxia Ding, Junqi Song","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.020","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.020","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A recent study by Wang et al. found that Xanthomonas exploits host carbohydrates through the conserved effector AvrBs2, which catalyzes UDP-α- D-galactose into xanthosan. Exclusively consumed by the pathogen via XanT and XanP, this 'nutrition niche' enables efficient carbon acquisition and virulence, offering new anti-xanthosan strategies for sustainable disease control.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1135-1137"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147960346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-05-07DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.012
Ganesan Alagarasan, Huihui Li, Yunbi Xu, José Crossa, Rajeev K Varshney
{"title":"Genomic language model-based genomic prediction in plant breeding.","authors":"Ganesan Alagarasan, Huihui Li, Yunbi Xu, José Crossa, Rajeev K Varshney","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.012","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Genomic prediction based on molecular markers has substantially advanced genomic selection; however, prediction accuracy often plateaus despite continued increases in marker density and methodological refinement. This saturation limits the effective use of available genomic information. The emergence of genomic language models (GLMs) offers a new framework for incorporating richer sequence-based information into genomic prediction, potentially capturing biologically meaningful DNA sequence grammar that is poorly represented by traditional marker-based approaches. We conclude that the future of genomic prediction will be shaped not primarily by algorithmic refinement but by the biological expressivity of genomic representations, and that GLMs offer a principled path toward expanding this representational frontier.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1164-1176"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147843087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-05-11DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.028
Hans-Henning Kunz, Thomas Nägele
{"title":"Integrating ionomes and metabolomes across organelles.","authors":"Hans-Henning Kunz, Thomas Nägele","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.028","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.028","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Plant metabolism is highly compartmentalized, sometimes even across organelles. Many participating enzymes are metalloproteins. Yet an integration of the metabolome and ionome is missing. Recently, nonaqueous fractionation (NAF) was adapted to decipher subcellular metal distributions. Because NAF is extensively used for subcellular metabolomics and proteomics, we petition to combine all these approaches.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1144-1146"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147875761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-04-22DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.005
Lucas Amokrane, Sébastien Aubourg, Eric Ruelland
{"title":"Misannotated domains in plant databases: lessons from 'PIPLC Y-box-containing' proteins.","authors":"Lucas Amokrane, Sébastien Aubourg, Eric Ruelland","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.005","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Automated protein annotation tools now scale rapidly, but many rely on partial matches to known protein domains and neglect structural or evolutionary context, risking misleading assignments. Using the annotation of 'phosphoinositide-dependent phospholipase C (PIPLC) Y-box-containing' proteins as a case study, we demonstrate how such errors arise, propagate across databases, and even contribute to the apparent emergence of artificial protein classes. Our analysis reveals that domain-based inference, without careful validation, can obscure true biological roles and distort genomic interpretations. To address this challenge, we propose a practical framework for context-aware annotation, integrating domain architecture, structural plausibility, and phylogenetic evidence. This approach offers researchers and database curators actionable strategies to improve annotation reliability in the era of high-throughput genomics.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1177-1186"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147782077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trends in Plant SciencePub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-05-13DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.024
Qin Feng, Yuese Ning, Guo-Liang Wang
{"title":"Disrupting SnRK1β1A confers broad-spectrum resistance to fungal pathogens.","authors":"Qin Feng, Yuese Ning, Guo-Liang Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.024","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.04.024","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Rice is highly vulnerable to many fungal pathogens that cause major yield losses. Yuan et al. showed that a conserved effector from six fungi targets the susceptibility hub SnRK1β1A. Disrupting this gene confers broad-spectrum resistance, highlighting its potential as a genetic target for improving multipathogen disease resistance in rice.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":"1141-1143"},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147933574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Javier Pichaco, Celia M Rodriguez-Dominguez, Antonio Diaz-Espejo
{"title":"Hydroactive stomata: a key innovation underpinning angiosperm ecological dominance.","authors":"Javier Pichaco, Celia M Rodriguez-Dominguez, Antonio Diaz-Espejo","doi":"10.1016/j.tplants.2026.07.013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2026.07.013","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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, CO<sub>2</sub>, and evaporative demand. We argue that this water-status control module complemented other stomatal signalling pathways responsive to light, CO<sub>2</sub>, 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.</p>","PeriodicalId":23264,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Plant Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":21.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148763924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}