Sorghum is a cereal crop with key agronomic traits of drought and heat stress tolerance, making it an ideal food and industrial commodity for hotter and more arid climates. These stress tolerances also present a useful scientific resource for studying the molecular basis for environmental resilience. Here we provide an extensive review of current transcriptome and proteome works conducted with laboratory, greenhouse, or field-grown sorghum plants exposed to drought, osmotic stress, or treated with the drought stress-regulatory phytohormone, abscisic acid. Large datasets from these studies reveal changes in gene/protein expression across diverse signaling and metabolic pathways. Together, the emerging patterns from these datasets reveal that the overall functional classes of stress-responsive genes/proteins within sorghum are similar to those observed in equivalent studies of other drought-sensitive model species. This highlights a monumental challenge of distinguishing key regulatory genes/proteins, with a primary role in sorghum adaptation to drought, from genes/proteins that change in expression because of stress. Finally, we discuss possible options for taking the research forward. Successful exploitation of sorghum research for implementation in other crops may be critical in establishing climate-resilient agriculture for future food security.

The aim of any breeding process is to fully express the targeted, superior/desirable parent characteristic in the progeny. Hybrids are often used in this dynamic, and complex process for which homozygous parents—which may require up to eight generations of back crossing and selection—are required. Doubled haploid (DH) technologies can facilitate the production of true breeding lines faster and in a more efficient manner than the traditional back crossing and selection strategies. Sunflower is the third most important oilseed crop in the world and has no available double haploid induction procedure/technique that can be efficiently used in breeding programs. A reproducible and efficient doubled haploid induction method would be a valuable tool in accelerating the breeding of new elite sunflower varieties. Although several attempts have been made, the establishment of a sunflower doubled haploid induction protocol has remained a challenge owing recalcitrance to in vitro culture regeneration. Approaches for haploid development in other crops are often cultivar specific, difficult to reproduce, and rely on available tissue culture protocols—which on their own are also cultivar and/or species specific. As an out-crossing crop, the lack of a double haploid system limits sunflower breeding and associated improvement processes, thereby delaying new hybrid and trait developments. Significant molecular advances targeting genes, such as the centromeric histone 3 (CenH3) and Matrilineal (MTL) gene with CRISPR/Cas9, and the successful use of viral vectors for the delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 components into plant cells eliminating the in vitro culture bottleneck, have the potential to improve double haploid technology in sunflower. In this review, the different strategies, their challenges, and opportunities for achieving doubled haploids in sunflower are explored.

Plant–pollinator interactions are essential for maintaining both pollinator and plant communities in native and agricultural environments. Animal-instigated pollination can be complex. Plants are usually visited by a number of different animal species, which in turn may visit flowers of several plant species. Therefore, the identification of the pollen carried by flower visitors is an essential first step in pollination biology. The skill and time required to identify pollen based on structure and morphology has been a major stumbling block in this field. Advances in the genetic analysis of DNA, using DNA barcoding, extracted directly from pollen offers an innovative alternative to traditional methods of pollen identification. This technique, which is reviewed in detail, can be used on pollen loads sampled from bees in the field and from specimens in historic collections. Here the importance of pollination, the role-players involved, their management and the evolution of their interactions, behaviour and morphology are reviewed – with a special focus on South African bees. Significance: Pollen metabarcoding will enable the identification of pollen for a multitude of uses, including agriculture, conservation and forensics. Plant–pollinator interaction documentation through pollen identification gives a more certain record of a visitor being a pollinator rather than a flower visitor that could be a nectar gatherer.

Nineteen samples from members of the plant genera Agapanthus, Clivia, Hippeastrum, and Scadoxus were collected from gardens in the Gauteng and Western Cape provinces of South Africa. The plants displayed highly variable symptoms of viral disease, including chlorosis, necrosis, streaking, and ringspot. RNAtag-seq was used to characterize the associated viral populations. Plants of the genus Agapanthus were found to be associated with three novel viruses from the families Caulimoviridae, Closteroviridae, and Betaflexiviridae; plants of the genus Clivia were associated with novel members of the families Potyviridae and Betaflexiviridae; and plants of the genus Scadoxus were associated with a novel member of the family Tospoviridae. Nerine latent virus was associated with plants of the genera Agapanthus, Clivia, and Hippeastrum, while hippeastrum mosaic virus was associated exclusively with a Hippeastrum cultivar.