100 questions | whystudyplants

100 most important questions in Plant Biology

From: Grierson, C.S., Barnes, S.R., Chase, M.W., Clarke, M., Grierson, D., Edwards, K.J., Jellis, G.J., Jones, J.D., Knapp, S., Oldroyd, G. and Poppy, G., 2011. One hundred important questions facing plant science research. New Phytologist, 192(1), pp.6-12

A1. How do we feed our children’s children?

A2. Which crops must be grown and which sacrificed, to feed the billions?

A3. When and how can we simultaneously deliver increased yields and reduce the environmental impact of agriculture?

A4. What are the best ways to control invasive species including plants, pests and pathogens?

A5. Considering two plants obtained for the same trait, one by genetic modification and one by traditional plant breeding techniques, are there differences between those two plants that justify special regulation?

A6. How can plants contribute to solving the energy crisis and ameliorating global warming?

A7. How do plants contribute to the ecosystem services upon which humanity depends?

A8. What new scientific approaches will be central to plant biology in the 21st Century?

A9. (a) How do we ensure that society appreciates the full importance of plants?

A9. (b) How can we attract the best young minds to plant science so that they can address Grand Challenges facing humanity such as climate change, food security, and fossil fuel replacement?

A10. How do we ensure that sound science informs policy decisions?

A11. How can we translate our knowledge of plant science into food security?

A12. Which plants have the greatest potential for use as biofuels with the least effects on biodiversity, carbon footprints and food security?

A13. Can crop production move away from being dependent on oil-based technologies?

A14. How can we use plant science to prevent malnutrition?

A15. How can we use knowledge of plants and their properties to improve human health?

A16. How do plants and plant communities (morphology, colour, fragrance, sound, taste etc.) affect human well-being?

A17. How can we use plants and plant science to improve the urban environment?

A18. How do we encourage and enable the interdisciplinary that is necessary to achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which address poverty and the environment?

B1. How can we test if a trait is adaptive?

B2. What is the role of epigenetic processes in modulating response to the environment during the life span of an individual?

B3. Are there untapped potential benefits to developing perennial forms of currently annual crops?

B4. Can we generate a step-change in C3 crop yield through incorporation of a C4 or intermediate C3 ⁄C4 or crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) mechanism?

B5. How do plants regulate the proportions of storage reserves laid down in various plant parts?

B6. What is the theoretical limit of productivity of crops and what are the major factors preventing this being realized?

B7. What determines seed longevity and dormancy?

B8. How can we control flowering time?

B9. How do signalling and cross-talk between the different plant hormones operate?

B10. Can we develop salt ⁄ heavy metal ⁄ drought-tolerant crops without creating invasive plants?

B11. Can plants be better utilized for large-scale remediation and reclamation efforts on degraded and ⁄ or toxic land?

B12. How can we translate our knowledge of plants and ecosystems into ‘clever farming’ practices?

B13. Can alternatives to monoculture be found without compromising yields?

B14. Can plants be bred to overcome dry land salinity or even reverse it?

B15. Can we develop crops that are more resilient to climate fluctuation without yield loss?

B16. Can we understand (explain and predict) the succession of plant species in any habitat, and crop varieties in any location, under climate change?

B17. To what extent are the stress responses of cultivated plants appropriate for current and future environments?

B18. Are endogenous plant adaption mechanisms enough to keep up with the pace of man-made environmental change?

B19. How can we improve our cultivated plants to make better use of finite resources?

B20. How do we grow plants in marginal environments without encouraging invasiveness?

B21. How can we use the growing of crops to limit deserts spreading?

C1. What are the best ways to control invasive species including plants, pests and pathogens?

C2. Can we provide a solution to intractable plant pest problems in order to meet increasingly stringent pesticide restrictions?

C3. Is it desirable to eliminate all pests and diseases in cultivated plants?

C4. What is the most sustainable way to control weeds?

C5. How can we simultaneously eradicate hunger and conserve biodiversity?

C6. How can we move nitrogen-fixing symbioses into non-legumes?

C7. Why is symbiotic nitrogen fixation restricted to relatively few plant species?

C8. How can the association of plants and mycorrhizal fungi be improved or extended towards better plant and ecosystem health?

C9. How do plants communicate with each other?

C10. How can we use our knowledge of the molecular biology of disease resistance to develop novel approaches to disease control?

C11. What are the mechanisms for systemic acquired resistance to pathogens?

C12. When a plant resists a pathogen, what stops the pathogen growing?

C13. How do pathogens overcome plant disease resistance, and is it inevitable?

C14. What are the molecular mechanisms for uptake and transport of nutrients?

C15. Can we use nonhost resistance to deliver more durable resistance in plants?

D1. How do plant cells maintain totipotency and how can we use this knowledge to improve tissue culture and regeneration?

D2. How are growth and division of individual cells coordinated to form genetically programmed structures with specific shapes, sizes and compositions?

D3. How do different genomes in the plant talk to one another to maintain the appropriate complement of organelles?

D4. How and why did multicellularity evolve in plants?

D5. How can we improve our understanding of programmed developmental gene regulation from a genome sequence?

D6. How do plants integrate multiple environmental signals and respond?

D7. How do plants store information on past environmental and developmental events?

D8. To what extent do epigenetic changes affect heritable characteristics of plants?

D9. Why are there millions of short RNAs in plants and what do they do?

D10. What is the array of plant protein structures?

D11. How do plant cells detect their location in the organism and develop accordingly?

D12. How do plant cells restrict signalling and response to specific regions of the cell?

D13. Is there a cell wall integrity surveillance system in plants?

D14. How are plant cell walls assembled, and how are their strength and composition determined?

D15. Can we usefully implant new synthetic biological modules in plants?

D16. To what extent can plant biology become predictive?

D17. What is the molecular ⁄ biochemical basis of heterosis?

D18. How do we achieve high-frequency targeted homologous recombination in plants?

D19. What factors control the frequency and distribution of genetic crossovers during meiosis?

D20. How can we use our knowledge about photosynthesis and its optimization to better harness the energy of the sun?

D21. Can we improve algae to better capture CO2 and produce higher yields of oil or hydrogen for fuel?

D22. How can we use our knowledge of carbon fixation at the biochemical, physiological and ecological levels to address the rising concentrations of atmospheric CO2?

D23. What is the function of the phenomenal breadth of secondary metabolites?

D24. How can we use plants as the chemical factories of the future?

D25. How do we translate our knowledge of plant cell walls to produce food, fuel and fibre more efficiently and sustainably?

E14. What is the answer to Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’ of the rapid rise and diversification of angiosperms?

E15. How has polyploidy contributed to the evolutionary success of flowering plants?

E16. What are the closest fossil relatives of the flowering plants?

E17. How do we best conserve phylogenetic diversity in order to maintain evolutionary potential?

Have a look at these question - which ones interest you? It might help you decide how to pick a university degree or dissertation/thesis topic!

Humans and plants

Plant adaptation and agriculture

Plant pathogens, fungi and nutrient transportation

Molecular biology, epigenetics and photosynthesis

Biodiversity, speciation and evolution

E1. How much do we know about plant diversity?

E2. How can we better exploit a more complete understanding of plant diversity?

E3. Can we increase crop productivity without harming biodiversity?

E4. Can we define objective criteria to determine when and where intensive or extensive farming practices are appropriate?

E5. How do plants contribute to ecosystem services?

E6. How can we ensure the long-term availability of genetic diversity within socio-economically valuable gene pools?

E7. How do specific genetic differences result in the diverse phenotypes of different plant species? That is, why is an oak tree an oak tree and a wheat plant a wheat plant?

E8. Which genomes should we sequence and how can we best extract meaning from the sequences?

E9. What is the significance of variation in genome size?

E10. What is the molecular and cellular basis of plants’ longevity and can plant life spans be manipulated?

E11. Why is the range of life spans in the plant kingdom so much greater than in animals?

E12. What is a plant species?

E13. Why are some clades of plants more species-rich than others?