Touch and plant defence: volatile communication with neighbours

Abstract

Plants use many cues to get the latest news on their environment, from different parts of the light spectrum predicting future shading by neighbours, to volatiles released by insect-infested plants preparing neighbouring plants for future attack, or touch providing information about impending mechanical stress or herbivore attacks. Markovic et al. (2019) have now shown that gentle touching of leaves leads to emission of volatiles that can activate the same set of defence genes in neighbouring plants as were up-regulated in the touched plant.