Green leaf volatiles increase plant fitness via biocontrol
To solve the acute, global problem of securing food resources for a continuously growing population, we must work constantly to increase the sustainability and effectiveness of modern agricultural techniques. These efforts depend on new insights from plant ecology, particularly from work on native plants that grow in the primordial agricultural niche. Based on field studies on wild tobacco plants in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, USA, researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, demonstrated that the release of volatiles which attract enemies of herbivores not only controls insect pests, but also increases the reproduction of infested plants. Transferred to the goals of integrated pest management, this means that these natural plant defences can be utilized to improve and increase agricultural yields in an environmentally friendly manner. These results are published on October 15, 2012, as part of the launch of the new open-access journal eLife.