Strict national measures have been implemented to safeguard the UK from a range of plant health threats, in particular the devastating disease caused by Xylella fastidiosa

Self-isolation in the face of a marauding pathogen may save lives but it comes at the expense of life-sustaining essentials such as transport, communication and connectivity. New research suggests plants must balance similar trade-offs as they respond to pathogens that could rip through their defence cell by cell

You may not have heard of geosmin but, wherever you may be on this planet, it is highly likely that you’d recognise its smell. New research by scientists in Sweden and the UK has helped to explain why it exists

Researchers have discovered that the circadian clocks in plants play a critical role in the consumption of water, allowing plants to use this precious resource more efficiently

For billions of years life on Earth was restricted to aquatic environments, the oceans, seas, rivers and lakes. Then 450 million years ago the first plants colonised land, evolving in the process multiple types of beneficial relationships with microbes in the soil

Researchers have discovered how a notorious pathogen may have hijacked one of nature’s most enduring mutual relationships, shedding new light on why plants possess genes that appear to be detrimental to their well-being

Researchers have solved the long-standing mystery of how plants control the arrangement of their cellulose fibres to grow, support themselves and store fixed carbon from the atmosphere

Dame Helen Mirren has helped renew efforts to keep plant disease Xylella fastidiosa out of the UK by narrating a new animation that warns of the devastation it causes, including the death of millions of olive trees in Europe

Professor Anne Osbourn has been awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to plant science, thanks to her pioneering work in plant natural product biosynthesis