Pollen tubes are attracted by LURE peptides, which are produced from ovules, to bring about fertilization. In their recent report published in Nature, a pair of plant biologists at Nagoya University has now revealed for the first time the receptor in pollen tubes that is required to detect LURE. Uncovering this unknown mechanism in plant fertilization may lead to an improvement in the efficiency of pollen tube growth, which may thus result in an increased success rate of fertilization. In addition, this study may also generate new methods to enable cross-fertilization between different plant species to generate new crops.