http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2011.03859.x/full

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One hundred important questions facing plant science research

亲，你在研究哪一个？

(原文中列出的问题如下：)

A. Society

A1. How do we feed our children’s children?
粮食安全

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

A3.When and how can we simultaneously deliver increased yields and reduce the environmental impact of agriculture?
作物增产与环境友好

A4.What are the best ways to control invasive species including plants, pests and pathogens?
生物入侵控制

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?
传统育种与转基因

A6.How can plants contribute to solving the energy crisis and ameliorating global warming?
能源危机与气候变暖

A7.How do plants contribute to the ecosystem services upon which humanity depends?
植物与生态

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

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

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

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

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

A12.Which plants have the greatest potential for use as biofuels with the least effectson biodiversity, carbon footprints and food security?
油料作物选择

A13.Can crop production move away from being dependent on oil-based technologies?
油料作物加工

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

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

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

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

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

B. Environment and adaptation

Plants have evolved to cope with changes in their environment but their adaptability has not necessarily been preserved as crops have been developed from wild species. Assessing and utilizing the capacity of plants to adapt should help to increase the use of more marginal land for cultivation, and enhance agricultural production despite changes in climate.

B1.How can we test if a trait is adaptive?
适应性检测

B2.What is the role of epigenetic processes in modulating response to the environment during the life span of an individual?
表观遗传与环境响应

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

B4.Can we generate a step-change in C3crop yield through incorporation of a C4or intermediate C3/C4or crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) mechanism?
C4途径利用

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

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

B7.What determines seed longevity and dormancy?
种子活性与休眠

B8.How can we control flowering time?
开花时间调控

B9.How do signalling and cross-talk between the different plant hormones operate?
信号途径交叉

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

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

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

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

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

B15.Can we develop crops that are more resilient to climate fluctuation without yield loss?
气候变化适应

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

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

B18.Are endogenous plant adaption mechanisms enough to keep up with the pace of man-made environmental change?
植物适应与人类活动影响

B19.How can we improve our cultivated plants to make better use of finite resources?
栽培植物提高

B20.How do we grow plants in marginal environments without encouraging invasiveness?
贫瘠土地利用

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

C. Species interactions

Cultivated plants interact directly with other species, including pathogens, pests, symbionts and weeds. Some interactions are beneficial, whereas others can cause devastating agricultural losses. It remains a challenge to control deleterious species without causing significant environmental damage, and there is untapped potential in developing improved interactions with beneficial species, such as mycorrhizal fungi.

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 nonlegumes?

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?

D. Understanding and utilizing plant cells

Plant structure and function depend on the composition and behaviour of plant cells. A lot of progress has been made towards identifying cellular components (including DNA, RNA, proteins, cell wall components and membranes) and understanding how they contribute to specific processes (such as development, metabolism, and pathogen resistance). The early questions in this section address frontiers in our understanding of plant cells, and potentially timely applications are tackled later.

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 CO2and 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 concentrationsof 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 translateour knowledge of plant cell walls to produce food, fuel and fibre more efficiently and sustainably?

E. Diversity

It is currently estimated that there are at least a quarter of a million species of flowering plant in the world, the vast majority of which have not been tested for useful properties. Questions in this section address the need to identify plants with potential for human benefit that have yet to be recognized, and to do so in a sustainable and responsible manner. The resulting knowledge and natural resources could then be used to tackle new challenges as they arise.

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?

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?