Introduction to emerging technologies in plant science.

In recent years, an array of new technologies is propelling plant science in exciting directions and facilitating the integration of data across multiple scales. These tools come at a critical time. With an expanding global population and the need to provide food in sustainable ways, we as a civilization will be asking more of plants and plant biologists than ever before. This special issue on emerging technologies in plant science brings together a set of reviews that spotlight a range of approaches that are changing how we ask questions and allow scientific inquiry from macromolecular to ecosystem scales.