Yanli Lu

Crop breeding faces mounting challenges from climate change, population growth, and shrinking farmland. While management and genetic improvement have contributed to yield gains, sustainable agriculture demands continuous progress to address local and future environmental stresses. Approximately 60% of past yield increases are attributed to improved abiotic stress resilience, yet further breeding advances are constrained by the complexity of environmental factors, which often co‐occur dynamically within farming systems. Enviromics—an emerging field dedicated to high‐throughput environmental characterization—enables comprehensive dissection of the “E” term in genotype × environment ( G × E ) interactions, improving predictive models for complex traits. Understanding how enviromics elucidates environmental effects and G × E will uncover novel mechanisms underlying crop resilience. In this perspective, we critically review the concepts of enviromics and abiotic enviromics and their impacts on plant stress responses. We further present a forward‐looking view on enviromics‐driven genetic improvement for abiotic stress adaptation, emphasizing that integrating enviromic‐assembly with multi‐omics and predictive modeling holds transformative potential for decoding molecular mechanisms and accelerating climate‐smart variety development. This framework offers a strategic pathway toward sustainable agriculture and global food security.

SUMOylation is critical for plant growth and defense, and the specific substrate recognition mediated by SUMO ligases dictates the biological processes in which SUMOylation functions. However, only four SUMO ligases involved in SUMOylation have been reported in plants. Here, we report MPEL1 as a new SUMO ligase in maize, which paradoxically exhibits SUMO ligase activity despite its sequence homology to SUMO-targeted ubiquitin ligases (STUbL). MPEL1 stabilizes the plant-specific mitogen-activated protein kinase 16 (MAPK16) via SUMOylation at Lys526 within C-terminal domain (CTD). MAPK16 directly binds to JAZ20 via its C-terminal domain and phosphorylates JAZ20 at Thr12/Ser13 residues, thereby triggering its proteasomal degradation and activating broad-spectrum resistance against two Fusarium pathogens. These pathogens cause devastating maize ear rot and stalk rot, leading to severe yield losses and serious food safety concerns worldwide. Notably, MAPK16 overexpression and JAZ20 knockout enhance disease resistance without yield penalty, highlighting their potential for crop improvement. These findings expand the plant SUMO ligase family and provide targets for breeding Fusarium-resistant crops.

SKI-INTERACTING PROTEINS (SKIPs), primarily known as splicing factors, control gene expression at the post-transcriptional level in stress responses in plants. However, little is known about SKIPs in regulating plant drought stress at the transcriptional level, particularly in maize ( Zea mays L. ). Here, we discover that ZmSKIP enhances drought tolerance in maize. ZmSKIP transgenic plants were generated to study how ZmSKIP positively regulates drought tolerance. Overexpression of ZmSKIP promoted stomatal closure and reduced water loss, whereas the opposite effect was observed in skip-aa mutants. ZmSKIP directly binds to the “TAATA” motif in the promoter of B-cell lymphoma 2-associated athanogene 8 ( ZmBAG8 ). bag8 mutants exhibit the decreased water loss and reduced stomatal aperture phenotype under drought stress. Additionally, ZmSKIP can be recruited by ZmBAG8 in stress granules (SGs) to decrease its protein abundance in the nucleus. Increased ZmBAG8 expression leads to larger stomatal aperture and normal plant growth. Under drought stress, the interaction between ZmSKIP and ZmBAG8 was abolished, while ZmSnRK2.3 phosphorylates ZmSKIP at Ser ²³⁶ and Ser ²⁴⁴ to enhances drought tolerance by strengthening the ability of ZmSKIP to suppress ZmBAG8 expression. Thus, our findings demonstrate that ZmSnRK2.3-mediated phosphorylation of ZmSKIP reduces ZmBAG8 expression and stomatal aperture, thereby enhancing drought tolerance in maize.

Photoperiod sensitivity poses a major obstacle to the expansion, breeding, and production of maize (Zea mays) in temperate regions. While the photoperiod-dependent FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT)/ZCNs pathway modulates floral development, the mechanism by which crops perceive specific light wavelengths and regulate flowering remains largely unknown. In this study, we demonstrate that the rhythmic expression of the blue light receptor FLAVIN-BINDING KELCH REPEAT F-BOX 1a (ZmFKF1a) is finely controlled by the Evening Complex (EC) components of LUX ARRHYTHMO 2 (ZmLUX2). ZmFKF1a interacts with GIGANTEA 1 (ZmGI1), stabilizing it and promoting its nuclear localization via a blue light-dependent mechanism. In the nucleus, ZmGI1 directly binds and activates Zea mays MADS-box 4 (ZMM4), a MADS-box gene specifically expressed in the shoot apical meristem, which drives floral transition. Genetic analyses revealed that ZmGI1 is epistatic to ZmFKF1a in promoting shoot apex development and accelerating flowering in maize. Our findings elucidate a ZmLUX2-ZmFKF1a–ZmGI1-ZMM4 regulatory module that fine-tunes photoperiodic flowering of day-neutral temperate maize lines, functioning independently of ZEA CENTRORADIALISs (ZCNs). Furthermore, transgenic maize overexpressing ZmFKF1a exhibited accelerated flowering and enhanced yield specifically in photoperiod-sensitive tropical maize lines under extreme natural long-day conditions, underscoring its potential application in improving maize production through precise manipulation of flowering traits. These insights advance our understanding of how blue light signaling orchestrates flowering time in maize and offer a promising strategy for optimizing crop performance in diverse environments.

SUMMARY: BES1/BZR1, a kind of plant‐specific transcription factor (TF), has been reported to regulate growth, development, and stress response. However, the maize BES1/BZR1 members are still largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the function and regulatory mechanism of maize ZmBES1/BZR1‐4 in regulating drought response and seed development. The ZmBES1/BZR1‐4 was localized in the nucleus depending on its bHLH domain and showed no self‐transactivation activity. The transcription level of ZmBES1/BZR1‐4 was induced by drought stress and was predominantly higher in seeds 25 days after pollination. Overexpression of ZmBES1/BZR1‐4 reduced drought tolerance but produced bigger seeds with higher seed weight in transgenic Arabidopsis, rice, and maize. Inversely, the ZmBES1/BZR1‐4 mutant Mu4‐1 and Mu4‐2 showed enhancement of drought tolerance and decreased seed size and weight. The ZmBES1/BZR1‐4 could directly bind to E‐box elements in the ZmMBP1 and ZmPum6 promoters to activate their transcription. Furthermore, the interaction between ZmBES1/BZR1‐4 and ZmTLP5 enhanced the ZmMBP1 and ZmPum6 transcription. Moreover, ZmMBP1 and ZmPum6 positively regulated seed size and weight, but ZmPum6 negatively regulated drought tolerance. Therefore, our findings reveal that ZmBES1/BZR1‐4 recruits ZmTLP5 to regulate drought tolerance and seed development by regulating ZmMBP1 and ZmPum6, which contributes to uncovering the function of BES1/BZR1s regulating growth, development, and stress response in crops.