The study created a system that blocks root‑mediated signaling between wheat varieties in a varietal mixture and used transcriptomic and metabolomic profiling to reveal that root chemical interactions drive reduced susceptibility to Septoria tritici blotch, with phenolic compounds emerging as key mediators. Disruption of these root signals eliminates both the disease resistance phenotype and the associated molecular reprogramming.

The authors used a bottom‑up thermodynamic modelling framework to investigate how plants decode calcium signals, starting from Ca2+ binding to EF‑hand proteins and extending to higher‑order decoding modules. They identified six universal Ca2+-decoding modules that can explain variations in calcium sensitivity among kinases and provide a theoretical basis for interpreting calcium signal amplitude and frequency in plant cells.

The study presents an optimized Agrobacterium-mediated transformation protocol for bread wheat that incorporates a GRF4‑GIF1 fusion to enhance regeneration and achieve genotype‑independent transformation across multiple cultivars. The approach consistently improves transformation efficiency while limiting pleiotropic effects, offering a versatile platform for functional genomics and gene editing in wheat.

The study characterizes the distinct and overlapping roles of the rice PI paralogs OsMADS2 and OsMADS4 in lodicule specification, flowering time, and floral organ development by analyzing null and double mutants and overexpression lines. Genome-wide binding (ChIP‑seq) and transcriptome (RNA‑seq) analyses identified downstream targets involved in cell division, cell wall remodeling, and osmotic regulation that underpin the observed phenotypes. These findings reveal novel functions for PI paralogs in reproductive development and highlight mechanisms of transcription factor diversification in Oryza sativa.