Kerrie Barry

Editor’s summary Structured Abstract Abstract Supplementary Materials References and Notes Information & Authors Metrics & Citations Check Access References Figures Tables Media Share Editor’s summary Grasses include many economically important food crops and function as primary producers in diverse ecosystems. They also exhibit distinctive metabolic traits, such as the ability to synthesize starch in both plastids and cytosol and the synthesis of lignin from both phenylalanine and tyrosine.

Abstract Mycorrhizal fungi play crucial roles in enhancing plant adaptation to heavy metal (HM) stress by interacting with host plants and other root microbiota, yet the molecular mechanisms underlying these interactions remain unclear. To elucidate how ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) mediate molecular dialogue between root-associated fungi and host plants under HM stress, we employed root metatranscriptomic analyses on a Pinus-Suillus system across a gradient of soil HM contamination.

INTRODUCTION Sorghum bicolor (sorghum) is a drought and heat-tolerant C4 grass used to produce grain, forage, and biomass on approximately 50 m ha worldwide, serving as a subsistence crop in some regions of the semiarid tropics. The species has a large and diverse germplasm collection (approximately 57 000 accessions) (https://www.grin-global.org/) that largely originates from the diverse eco-regions of Africa, sorghum's center of origin.