Biologicals for crop protection and plant and soil health are going mainstream after decades of being niche products. All categories of biological crop inputs - bioprotection, biostimulants and bionutrients - are growing at double digits annually, outpacing their synthetic chemical counterparts. As a serial bioag entrepreneur starting my first company more than 30 years ago, I had many challenges to being ahead of the market, bringing a higher level of science to biopesticide development, and changing the paradigm of how biologicals are used by farmers.

Both climate and land-use change have accelerated over the past decades. The cumulative effects of these disruptions are not additive or systematic; rather, they pose complex, dynamic environmental challenges to ecological systems. To survive, terrestrial plants and animals will need to shift their distributions to track habitable regions or exhibit the flexibility to survive these shifting environmental regimes.

The ongoing climate change has put a spotlight on rapid evolutionary processes that could aid species adapt to new environments. However, many questions remain unanswered: What is the genetic architecture traits influencing fitness across environments? Is this genomic architecture predictable? Can we understand genetic constraints across multiple adaptive traits? How is genetic variation lost during extinction?