Plants remember their battles — and may pass the lesson to their seedlings

A plant that survives disease is not quite the same plant afterwards: it remembers. Researchers at the University of Sheffield, led by Jurriaan Ton with Adam Hannan Parker, used a 'plant vaccination' tool to switch on a gene called ROS1 in a controlled way and watched how the memory is filed. Published in Nature Communications, the study found plants store immune memory along the arms of their chromosomes while locking down the unstable, virus-rich regions near chromosome centres — remembering the fight without destabilising the genome. Work with rice, with Japan's Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, suggests part of that memory passes to offspring. It points to a new kind of crop breeding: disease resistance — and perhaps tolerance of drought, heat and salt — prepared without changing a plant's DNA.

SDG 2 · Zero hunger — Mechanism: tech innovation