Focus issue editorial: Numeracy, realism, and relevance in plant science

This Focus Issue is unusual, which calls for some background on what motivated it.One driver was the recent 16 uptick in frustration with overclaiming and overselling at the interface between molecular plant science and 17 agriculture (Khaipho-Burch et al., 2023; Giller et al., 2024).A second driver, related to the first, was the 18 increasingly evident disconnect between metabolic engineers and synthetic biolog-ists who think and work at 19 DNA, protein, pathway, and cell levels and the agricultural and economic realities that plant breeders, crop 20 physiologists, and agronomists deal with (Porter and Wollenweber, 2018; Sadras et al., 2020; Hickford et al., 21 2024).And behind both of these drivers lies a widening erosion of confidence in science (or at least in 'The al., 2025).Next are articles that explain key plant breeding con-cepts and how molecular genetics can be