After more than thirty years of neoliberal governments and policies, Mexico is at a historic junction. Humanistic, scientific, and technological development and innovation (HCTI) research models need to change, and all the sectors involved must be advocated for participation in the productive transformation of the nation. This transformation must appeal to and include public and private higher education institutions, research centers, and public sector institutions at the federal, state, and municipal levels, as well as civil society organizations, companies, and local and regional communities willing to responsibly support humanistic, social, scientific and technological development research endeavors.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made many more Mexican men and women understand that the proposed changes are possible and that they cannot be postponed. In the response of the different HCTI communities to the pandemic in Mexico, research, technological development, and public education efforts have addressed the biological factors of the disease and its contagion dynamics to develop suitable epidemiological mitigation mechanisms. It has also become imperative that these efforts address the structural causes and ramifications of the pandemic. This should involve making visible and addressing, among other things, the pre-existing chronic diseases that aggravate the effects of the pandemic among the Mexican population; the inequality and social exclusion that create differentiated conditions of health vulnerability; the relationship between these inequalities and the colonial, capitalist and patriarchal regime in which we live; the voracious relationship that modern human beings have established with the Earth; and connections between corporate food production systems and the dissemination of new microorganisms and viruses that affect the ecological balance between different populations. To succeed on the HCTI sector efforts, it is crucial to establish effective communication channels between different types of knowledge so that it becomes possible to link new advances in scientific and humanistic research with traditional knowledge and, in this way, find long- term solutions to the human being community problems. Opening these communication channels would enhance the possibility of collectively building routes towards a more just and healthy future.

In 2020 and 2021, the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) challenged the Mexican HCTI community and other actors to undertake or intensify their efforts in assuming the social responsibility of their work to face COVID-19. The enthusiastic response resulted in various curative and preventive health actions such as the production of sanitizing gel for public hospitals; the manufacture of respirators and ventilators; the development of the first stages of the Patria vaccine; the use of data science and artificial intelligence for epidemiological modeling and decision-making in the Health Sector; clinical

trials and tests of new drugs; a special postdoctoral program in medicine; the call for national research proposal for COVID-19 (Pronaii); and development of the National Network of Laboratories for COVID-19 analysis. Before and during the pandemic, a cluster of Conacyt programs and calls have provided to HCTI community the opportunity to act on the structural causes of the high vulnerability of the Mexican population to this and other pandemics. Conacyt will continue on this effort. In particular, to support systemic research on how the hegemonic model of ecosystem transformation and food production, distribution, processing, and consumption, increases this vulnerability. Conacyt has launched calls for research proposals under the National Strategic Programs for Water; Toxicities; Socio-Ecological Systems; Health; and Food Sovereignty. It has also called for proposal for Development of Technological Innovations for a Mexican Agriculture Free of Agro-toxic supplies; for Science Frontier Research; and for Universal Access to Knowledge.

Conacyt welcomes the publication of this Special Issue, volume 39(4), of the Mexican Journal of Phytopathology, entitled ‘ COVID-19 and Plant Health ’, and congratulates both, the editors for this timely initiative and the members of the Mexican Society of Phytopathology that responded to the journal request. This Special Issue examines the relationship between COVID-19 and Plant Health activities and disciplines from different perspectives, all of them relevant and interconnected, some unusual and very opportune. This issue will allow readers to develop a more holistic and integrative understanding of the pandemic and the problems associated with it by focusing on six key areas: 1. It addresses and answers basic questions of the readers: what is COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2; how it has affected the health and labor activities of the population (especially among young and small farmers); what are the common features of plant crop and human epidemiology and what can they learn from each other in terms of theory and practical actions during the current pandemic; 2. It shows how social measures taken to reduce the contagion risk have affected the production, national and international distribution and consumption of agricultural products, both in general and in specific crops; 3. It highlights the importance of recovering the native germoplasm, the farmer’s agricultural practices and knowledge, agroecological control of pests and diseases, local rural food consumption, and urban agriculture, to face the supplies dependency and fragility of corporate agri-food circuits; 4. It indicates why agricultural production using non-toxic phytosanitary practices and a healthy diet are crucial for reducing the incidence of morbidities that lead to fatal outcomes due to SARS-CoV-2; 5. It reports the challenges of practicing plant health teaching and professional practice under confinement and social distancing conditions, and celebrates the didactic creativity and adaptability shown by the academic plant health community; 6. It provides a channel for students of phytopathology and related disciplines to talk to us about the challenges and uncertainties they have had to face during the pandemic, as well as the lessons, the paradigm shifts, and the new tasks that this historical moment has presented to them.

Conacyt hopes that initiatives analogous to this Special Issue multiply so that the HCTI scientific communities become increasingly involved in the development of solutions to the most pressing national problems.

Mexico City November 10, 2021