Last year was my first year as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Plant Research (JPR), the position I took over from Prof. Kouki Hikosaka in March 2021. Thanks to the tremendous efforts of editors, we selected many excellent papers for publication last year, from over 800 submissions. As the Editor-in-Chief, I hope for continuous growth of JPR in the coming years. In terms of Impact Factor, we have reached a record high of 2.629 in 2020. We will do our best to keep JPR as a high-impact journal in 2022. More importantly, we want JPR to be more friendly and valuable to both readers and contributors than ever before. We hope that our readers will continue to support us as we aim to be a journal that contributes to basic plant science by fulfilling the role of JPR as clearly stated in the aims and scope of JPR, which was reorganized last April, as “The Journal of Plant Research is an international journal dedicated to the dissemination of fundamental knowledge in all areas of basic plant sciences.” Also we ask contributors to note that “Papers that are purely descriptive with no clear hypothesis are not suitable for this journal. Manuscripts in the area of applied plant sciences, such as agricultural or medicinal research, are accepted only if the manuscripts contribute to basic plant sciences.” (https://www.springer.com/journal/10265/aims-and-scope).

We published two JPR symposium issues last year; “Beyond Fibonacci Patterns and the Golden Angle: Phyllotactic Variations and their Cellular Origin” (Yin and Kitazawa 2021), and “Imaging, Screening and Remote Sensing of Photosynthetic Activity and Stress Responses” (Kohzuma et al. 2021). This year we will publish a JPR symposium issue entitled “Regulation of Cyclic Electron Flow, A to Z” edited by guest editors, Drs. Hiroko Takahashi and Ginga Shimakawa. We hope many readers will be interested in this new JPR symposium issue.

As for virtual issues, last year we published “Virtual issue: cell wall functions in plant growth and environmental responses” (Iwai 2021). This year we are also planning an issue but have not yet determine the theme. Please let us know if you have an idea for an attractive virtual issue this year.

In addition to regular papers, last year we published 8 “Current Topics in Plant Research”, as review papers; “Rapid movements in plants” (Mano and Hasebe 2021), “Evolutionary histories and mycorrhizal associations of mycoheterotrophic plants dependent on saprotrophic fungi” (Ogura-Tsujita et al. 2021), “Hevea brasiliensis latex proteomics: a review of analytical methods and the way forward” (Habib and Ismail 2021), “Cellular oxidative stress in programmed cell death: focusing on chloroplastic 1O2 and mitochondrial cytochrome-c release” (Matilla 2021), “The biotechnological importance of the plant-specific NAC transcription factor family in crop improvement” (Singh et al. 2021), “ ×Sorbaronia mitschurinii: from an artificially created species to an invasion in Europe: repeating the fate of invasive Amelanchier × spicata, a review” (Stalažs 2021), “Plant adaptability in karst regions” (Liu et al. 2021), and “Current knowledge about Na2SO4 effects on plants: what is different in comparison to NaCl?” (Reginato et al. 2021). The present issue presents the newest one entitled “Arabidopsis ASYMMETRIC LEAVES2 (AS2): roles in plant morphogenesis, cell division, and pathogenesis” (Machida et al. 2022) in the following pages. These diverse titles clearly indicate the wide range of JPR in basic plant science. I believe that these Current Topics in Plant Research help readers greatly in understanding the current state of plant science.

We appreciate new editors who have been working since last October; Dr. Satoshi Koi and Dr. Hiroko Kurokawa. We welcome new Editorial Board members who begin their 4-year term in January 2022: Dr. Satoshi Shimada, Dr. Juan Arroyo, Dr. Gerald M. Schneeweiss, Dr. Daniele Cicuzza (reappointment), Dr. Yudai Okuyana (reappointment), Dr. Harufumi Nishida, Dr, John Bowman (reappointment), Dr. Hidehiro Fukaki (reappointment), Dr. Munetaka Sugiyama (reappointment), Dr. Yuchen Long, Dr. Stéphane Verger, Dr. Kenichi Tsuda (reappointment), Dr. Neung Teaumroong (reappointment), Dr. Germán Robert, Dr. Fuminari Takahashi, and Dr. Hironori Fujita (reappointment).

In addition to reappointed members, we thank Editorial Board members who have rotated off: Dr. Hans-Peter Comes, Dr. Hidetoshi Sakayama, Dr. Harald Schneider, Dr. Masaki Shimamura, Dr. Gyung Tae Kim, Dr. Attila Kereszt, Dr. Jeong Sheop Shin, and Dr. Noriaki Tanabe.

We wish you a Happy New Year, and we very welcome submissions of excellent articles in 2022.