Importance of measuring and reporting environmental conditions across plant science subdisciplines

Understanding plant responses to the environment is based on research performed across several scales and subdisciplines. However, the interpretation and repeatability of experimental results depend on careful reporting of experimental procedures and environmental conditions. These conditions include light intensity and quality, temperature, relative humidity and vapor pressure deficit, soil water potential or volumetric water content, and pot size, which interact upon plant physiological responses across biological and experimental scales regardless of whether they are the focus of the experiment. To ascertain how effectively and consistently these conditions are reported, we reviewed greater than 200 plant science research articles published from 2020 through 2024 on vascular plants. Environmental condition data were often not reported, including cases where the specific environmental variable was the focus of the study. This situation hampers both replicability and interpretability of results and hinders progress in understanding plant physiological responses across subdisciplines. The Environmental and Ecological Plant Physiology section of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) recommends several best practices to measure and report environmental conditions in plant physiology experiments, such as measuring and reporting actual environmental conditions, especially of control variables, to enable replication and comparative interpretation among experiments. These guidelines can aid authors in experimental design and manuscript preparation and assist reviewers in evaluating submitted manuscripts. Following such guidelines will enhance the dynamic progress of sound plant science within our community by improving replicability and enabling cross-disciplinary interpretation of results.