Editorial: Roots-The Hidden Provider

Most plant roots are found hidden underground. They can formimmense root systems with lengths of several kilometers featuring an architecture with up to millions of branch roots. Their versatile functions range from anchoring plants in soil via storing photosynthetic products to the vital uptake of water and nutrients. Plants build the basis of a food chain that ends with more than seven billion people who have to be fed every day. Therefore, it is vital to secure and enhance crop production, especially in terms of prevailing agricultural threats and climate change. The challengemust be to optimize plant's nutrient acquisition and stress tolerance. Understanding plant nutrition, homeostasis, and stress responses is a first step to directed and efficient manipulations and adjustments to counterbalance stress and deficiency symptoms. This knowledge must be used to optimize the use of fertilizer and water to achieve well-balanced nutrition acquisition as well as the use of pesticides to treat biotic stress. Such optimization is desirable as the constant use of fertilizer, irrigation, and pesticides is associated with negative long-term effects. Knowledge about nutrient uptake and signaling as well as behavior in stress situations will be valuable if we are to design adequate treatments to prepare plants for environmental challenges.