K. Barry

Abstract Sugarcane, the world’s most harvested crop by tonnage, has shaped global history, trade and geopolitics, and is currently responsible for 80% of sugar production worldwide1. While traditional sugarcane breeding methods have effectively generated cultivars adapted to new environments and pathogens, sugar yield improvements have recently plateaued2.

INTRODUCTION The world's forests are experiencing widespread mortality events because of climate extremes like droughts (Hartmann et al. 2022). Such climate extremes are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change in many regions (IPCC 2022), threatening multiple ecosystem services that forests provide, including their capacity to mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration and storage (Anderegg et al. 2020).