One hundred important questions facing plant science: an international perspective

Abstract

The ‘One Hundred Important Questions Facing Plant Science Research’ project aimed to capture a global snapshot of the current issues and future questions facing plant science. This revisiting builds on the original 2011 paper. Over 600 questions were collected from anyone interested in plants, which were reduced to a final list of 100 by four teams of global panellists. There was remarkable consensus on the most important topics between the global subpanels. We present the top 100 most important questions facing plant science in 2022, ranging from how plants can contribute to tackling climate change, to plant-defence priming and epigenome plasticity. We also provide explanations of why each question is important. We demonstrate how focussing on climate change, community and protecting plant life has become increasingly important for plant science over the past 11 years. This revisiting illustrates the collaborative and international need for long-term funding of plant science research, alongside the broad community-driven efforts to actively ameliorate and halt climate change, while adapting to its consequences.