Tomato Plants' Chemical Signal Turned Into Pest-Killing Chemical Weapon
Garden tomatoes! National Museum of Natural History When cutworms attack tomato plants, the plants huff and puff various substances, which serve as a chemical warning to neighboring plants that the pesky grubs are afoot. What effect might this have on the neighbors? One of the chemicals that tomatoes spew out upon attack, called (Z)-3-hexenol, is actually absorbed and converted by surrounding plants into a chemical weapon against cutworms, according to a new study. This use of a chemical "warning" as a weapon is quite unusual, scientists said. In the study, the researchers found that neighboring tomato plants exposed to these chemical cries for help contained a substance in their leaves called HexVic (or (Z)-3-hexenyl-vicianoside, if you must). They also found that when HexVic is fed to cutworms, which are the larvae...