Q&A: Engineering crop resilience to heat and drought may help reverse climate change

Heat waves are arriving sooner and becoming hotter, with the United Kingdom recording May 25 as its hottest day in May since tracking began more than a century ago, only for the record to be broken again the next day. While humans can turn to artificial means of cooling, such as air conditioning or swimming pools, plants are left to cope with heat and frequently co-occurring droughts on their own. Sarah M. Assmann, Waller Professor of Biology at Penn State, is working to better understand how plants respond to environmental signals—and is applying that understanding to develop crops more resilient to environmental stress.