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Angiosperms are the cornerstone of most terrestrial ecosystems and human livelihoods1,2. A robust understanding of angiosperm evolution is required to explain their rise to ecological dominance. So far, the angiosperm tree of life has been determined primarily by means of analyses of the plastid genome3,4. Many studies have drawn on this foundational work, such as classification and first insights into angiosperm diversification since their Mesozoic origins5,6,7. However, the limited and biased sampling of both taxa and genomes undermines confidence in the tree and its implications. Here, we build the tree of life for almost 8,000 (about 60%) angiosperm genera using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes8. This 15-fold increase in genus-level sampling relative to comparable nuclear studies9 provides a critical test of earlier results and brings notable change to key groups, especially in rosids, while substantiating many previously predicted relationships. Scaling this tree to time using 200 fossils, we discovered that early angiosperm evolution was characterized by high gene tree conflict and explosive diversification, giving rise to more than 80% of extant angiosperm orders. Steady diversification ensued through the remaining Mesozoic Era until rates resurged in the Cenozoic Era, concurrent with decreasing global temperatures and tightly linked with gene tree conflict. Taken together, our extensive sampling combined with advanced phylogenomic methods shows the deep history and full complexity in the evolution of a megadiverse clade.

Increasingly, consumers are paying attention to healthier food diets, “healthy” food attributes (such as “freshness”, “naturalness” and “nutritional value”), and the overall sustainability of production and processing methods. Other significant trends include a growing demand for regional and locally produced/supplied and less processed food. To meet these demands, food production and processing need to evolve to preserve the raw material and natural food properties while ensuring such sustenance is healthy, tasty, and sustainable. In parallel, it is necessary to understand the influence of consumers’ practices in maintaining the beneficial food attributes from purchasing to consumption. The whole supply chain must be resilient, fair, diverse, transparent, and economically balanced to make different food systems sustainable. This chapter focuses on the role of dynamic value chains using biodiverse, underutilised crops to improve food system resilience and deliver foods with good nutritional and health properties while ensuring low environmental impacts, and resilient ecosystem functions.

The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the organisation of successful farm demonstrations. It collects many interesting tools, guidelines and videos that can help farmers and other farm organisers in organising successful farm demonstrations. The Training Kit will inspire them to uplift their future demonstration events, whether on-farm or online. The Training Kit offers an overview of the most important elements to be considered for preparing, delivering, and evaluating demonstrations on the farm. The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the skills enhancement and capacity building of farm demo organisers. It enables the practical implementation of innovative demo practices on the farm and increases the awareness of the value of farmer-to-farmer exchanges during farm demonstrations.

The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the organisation of successful farm demonstrations. It collects many interesting tools, guidelines and videos that can help farmers and other farm organisers in organising successful farm demonstrations. The Training Kit will inspire them to uplift their future demonstration events, whether on-farm or online. The Training Kit offers an overview of the most important elements to be considered for preparing, delivering, and evaluating demonstrations on the farm. The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the skills enhancement and capacity building of farm demo organisers. It enables the practical implementation of innovative demo practices on the farm and increases the awareness of the value of farmer-to-farmer exchanges during farm demonstrations.

The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the organisation of successful farm demonstrations. It collects many interesting tools, guidelines and videos that can help farmers and other farm organisers in organising successful farm demonstrations. The Training Kit will inspire them to uplift their future demonstration events, whether on-farm or online. The Training Kit offers an overview of the most important elements to be considered for preparing, delivering, and evaluating demonstrations on the farm. The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the skills enhancement and capacity building of farm demo organisers. It enables the practical implementation of innovative demo practices on the farm and increases the awareness of the value of farmer-to-farmer exchanges during farm demonstrations.

The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the organisation of successful farm demonstrations. It collects many interesting tools, guidelines and videos that can help farmers and other farm organisers in organising successful farm demonstrations. The Training Kit will inspire them to uplift their future demonstration events, whether on-farm or online. The Training Kit offers an overview of the most important elements to be considered for preparing, delivering, and evaluating demonstrations on the farm. The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the skills enhancement and capacity building of farm demo organisers. It enables the practical implementation of innovative demo practices on the farm and increases the awareness of the value of farmer-to-farmer exchanges during farm demonstrations.

The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the organisation of successful farm demonstrations. It collects many interesting tools, guidelines and videos that can help farmers and other farm organisers in organising successful farm demonstrations. The Training Kit will inspire them to uplift their future demonstration events, whether on-farm or online. The Training Kit offers an overview of the most important elements to be considered for preparing, delivering, and evaluating demonstrations on the farm. The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the skills enhancement and capacity building of farm demo organisers. It enables the practical implementation of innovative demo practices on the farm and increases the awareness of the value of farmer-to-farmer exchanges during farm demonstrations.

The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the organisation of successful farm demonstrations. It collects many interesting tools, guidelines and videos that can help farmers and other farm organisers in organising successful farm demonstrations. The Training Kit will inspire them to uplift their future demonstration events, whether on-farm or online. The Training Kit offers an overview of the most important elements to be considered for preparing, delivering, and evaluating demonstrations on the farm. The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the skills enhancement and capacity building of farm demo organisers. It enables the practical implementation of innovative demo practices on the farm and increases the awareness of the value of farmer-to-farmer exchanges during farm demonstrations.

The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the organisation of successful farm demonstrations. It collects many interesting tools, guidelines and videos that can help farmers and other farm organisers in organising successful farm demonstrations. The Training Kit will inspire them to uplift their future demonstration events, whether on-farm or online. The Training Kit offers an overview of the most important elements to be considered for preparing, delivering, and evaluating demonstrations on the farm. The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the skills enhancement and capacity building of farm demo organisers. It enables the practical implementation of innovative demo practices on the farm and increases the awareness of the value of farmer-to-farmer exchanges during farm demonstrations.

The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the organisation of successful farm demonstrations. It collects many interesting tools, guidelines and videos that can help farmers and other farm organisers in organising successful farm demonstrations. The Training Kit will inspire them to uplift their future demonstration events, whether on-farm or online. The Training Kit offers an overview of the most important elements to be considered for preparing, delivering, and evaluating demonstrations on the farm. The FarmDemo Training Kit supports the skills enhancement and capacity building of farm demo organisers. It enables the practical implementation of innovative demo practices on the farm and increases the awareness of the value of farmer-to-farmer exchanges during farm demonstrations.

Many governments and organisations are encouraging carbon dioxide capture in woodlands through the creation of markets that commodify forest carbon. These schemes can connect different values in local landscapes and global environmental responses to climate change, which go beyond increasing the cost-effectiveness of carbon offsetting. In this paper we use the UK Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) to explore the values and meanings brought to the WCC by landowners, forest developers and carbon buyers, with a focus on Scotland. Our analysis presents quantitative and qualitative evidence of different values coexisting among the participants of the WCC, accommodating both conservation oriented woodland expansion projects and those driven by income diversification. The former mainly use non-commercial native broadleaf species and the latter combine commercial non-native conifer plantation with different levels of native broadleaves whilst remaining non-viable economically. WCC participants convey different values and meanings of forest carbon, transcending commodity value as tradeable offsets to encompass other environmental and social outcomes. We argue that the WCC works by encoding and enabling the exchange of different values, which for proponents is a positive feature that captures the diverse co-benefits of woodland. Critics of carbon offsets, meanwhile, may see these shifts in value as a form of greenwashing that benefits carbon buyers. We argue that research into the effects of carbon offset schemes should incorporate both material and symbolic processes that go beyond carbon itself.

As the most abundant animals on earth, nematodes are a dominant component of the soil community. They play critical roles in regulating biogeochemical cycles and vegetation dynamics within and across landscapes and are an indicator of soil biological activity. Here, we present a comprehensive global dataset of soil nematode abundance and functional group composition. This dataset includes 6,825 georeferenced soil samples from all continents and biomes. For geospatial mapping purposes these samples are aggregated into 1,933 unique 1-km pixels, each of which is linked to 73 global environmental covariate data layers. Altogether, this dataset can help to gain insight into the spatial distribution patterns of soil nematode abundance and community composition, and the environmental drivers shaping these patterns.

Potato cyst nematodes (PCNs), Globodera rostochiensis and G. pallida, cause important economic losses. They are hard to manage because of their ability to remain dormant in soil for many years. Although general knowledge about these plant parasitic nematodes has considerably increased over the past decades, very little is known about molecular events involved in cyst dormancy and hatching, two key steps of their development. Here, we have studied the progression of PCN transcriptomes from dry cysts to hatched juveniles using RNA-Seq. We found that several cell detoxification-related genes were highly active in the dry cysts. Many genes linked to an increase of calcium and water uptake were up-regulated during transition from dormancy to hydration. Exposure of hydrated cysts to host plant root exudates resulted in different transcriptional response between species. After 48 h of exposure, G. pallida cysts showed no significant modulation of gene expression while G. rostochiensis had 278 differentially expressed genes. The first G. rostochiensis significantly up-regulated gene was observed after 8 h and was coding for a transmembrane metalloprotease. This enzyme is able to activate/inactivate peptide hormones and could be involved in a cascade of events leading to hatching. Several known effector genes were also up-regulated during hatching.

Dagger and needle nematodes included in the family Longidoridae (viz. Longidorus, Paralongidorus, and Xiphinema) are highly polyphagous plant-parasitic nematodes in wild and cultivated plants and some of them are plant-virus vectors (nepovirus). The mitochondrial (mt) genomes of the dagger and needle nematodes, Xiphinema rivesi, Xiphinema pachtaicum, Longidorus vineacola and Paralongidorus litoralis were sequenced in this study. The four circular mt genomes have an estimated size of 12.6, 12.5, 13.5 and 12.7 kb, respectively. Up to date, the mt genome of X. pachtaicum is the smallest genome found in Nematoda. The four mt genomes contain 12 protein-coding genes (viz. cox1-3, nad1-6, nad4L, atp6 and cob) and two ribosomal RNA genes (rrnL and rrnS), but the atp8 gene was not detected. These mt genomes showed a gene arrangement very different within the Longidoridae species sequenced, with the exception of very closely related species (X. americanum and X. rivesi). The sizes of non-coding regions in the Longidoridae nematodes were very small and were present in a few places in the mt genome. Phylogenetic analysis of all coding genes showed a closer relationship between Longidorus and Paralongidorus and different phylogenetic possibilities for the three Xiphinema species.

Achieving social equity among local stakeholders should be a key objective for ecosystem service (ES) governance in Europe's ecologically fragile treeline areas. The ES literature tends to be biased towards distributional equity and market-based instruments when assessing social equity of ES governance. In this study, we analyze a wide range of social equity procedures that have been applied in Europe, using 11 synthesized case studies of governance-related challenges and 75 proposals for governance enhancement from 8 European countries provided by researchers with expertise on treeline area governance. The proposals were grouped by inductive clustering into 10 procedural or distributional equity-related policy recommendations: (1) increase stakeholder collaboration, (2) balance interactions between horizontal and vertical governance levels, (3) increase ES education, (4) use science to guide decisions, (5) start collaboration at an early stage, (6) enhance transparency, (7) aim to mitigate negative impacts, (8) use an ES approach to identify synergistic goals for governance, (9) enhance balanced multi-functional land use, and (10) use market-based instruments to balance benefits and costs deriving from governance decisions. Finally, we discuss 5 more general proposals on how regulatory and market-based approaches could be linked to enhance both procedural and distributional equity of treeline area governance.

Potato mop-top pomovirus (PMTV) is one of a few viruses that can move systemically in plants in the absence of coat protein (CP). Pomoviruses encode the triple gene block genetic module of movement proteins (TGB 1, 2 and 3) and recent research suggests that PMTV RNA is transported either as ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes containing TGB1 or encapsidated in virions containing TGB1. Furthermore, there are different requirements for local or systemic (long-distance) movement. Research suggests that nucleolar passage of TGB1 may be important for the long-distance movement of both RNP and virions. Moreover, and uniquely, the long-distance movement of the CP-encoding RNA requires expression of both major and minor CP subunits and is inhibited when only the major CP sub unit is expressed. This paper reviews pomovirus research and presents a current model for RNA movement.

Plant-parasitic nematodes (PPN) need to be adapted to survive in the absence of a suitable host or in hostile environmental conditions. Various forms of developmental arrest including hatching inhibition and dauer stages are used by PPN in order to survive these conditions and spread to other areas. Potato cyst nematodes (PCN) (Globodera pallida and G. rostochiensis) are frequently in an anhydrobiotic state, with unhatched nematode persisting for extended periods of time inside the cyst in the absence of the host. This paper shows fundamental changes in the response of quiescent and diapaused eggs of G. pallida to hydration and following exposure to tomato root diffusate (RD) using microarray gene expression analysis encompassing a broad set of genes. For the quiescent eggs, 547 genes showed differential expression following hydration vs. hydratation and RD (H-RD) treatment whereas 708 genes showed differential regulation for the diapaused eggs following these treatments. The comparison between hydrated quiescent and diapaused eggs showed marked differences, with 2,380 genes that were differentially regulated compared with 987 genes following H-RD. Hydrated quiescent and diapaused eggs were markedly different indicating differences in adaptation for long-term survival. Transport activity is highly up-regulated following H-RD and few genes were coincident between both kinds of eggs. With the quiescent eggs, the majority of genes were related to ion transport (mainly sodium), while the diapaused eggs showed a major diversity of transporters (amino acid transport, ion transport, acetylcholine or other molecules).

Roots are important to plants for a wide variety of processes, including nutrient and water uptake, anchoring and mechanical support, storage functions, and as the major interface between the plant and various biotic and abiotic factors in the soil environment. Therefore, understanding the development and architecture of roots holds potential for the manipulation of root traits to improve the productivity and sustainability of agricultural systems and to better understand and manage natural ecosystems. While lateral root development is a traceable process along the primary root and different stages can be found along this longitudinal axis of time and development, root system architecture is complex and difficult to quantify. Here, we comment on assays to describe lateral root phenotypes and propose ways to move forward regarding the description of root system architecture, also considering crops and the environment.