WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A Purdue University team of scientists upended a long-held assumption about how plant volatile compounds, the chemicals that are responsible for scent, move to the outside of ...

When plants are in distress or being fed on by insects, they have been known to send out sensory volatile cues that alert organisms in the area — such as birds — that they are in need of help. While ...

This press release is available in German. To solve the acute, global problem of securing food resources for a continuously growing population, we must work constantly to increase the sustainability ...

Aphids are a major crop pest, but chemical pesticides lead to the emergence of resistant organisms, and biological control can be hampered by the natural dispersal of many aphid predators. When aphids ...

Volatiles can also be used to make perfumes, food additives, preservatives, chemotherapeutics and anesthetics. Volatiles must cross various barriers, an aqueous cell wall and the waxy cuticle or "skin ...

If you’ve enjoyed the smell of fresh cut grass, you may have unwittingly eavesdropped on a conversation between plants. The smell is caused by a group of compounds called green leaf volatiles (GLVs) ...

To secure food resources, sustainability of agriculture must be increased. Such efforts also depend on insights from plant ecology. Based on field studies on tobacco plants, researchers demonstrated ...

A study by Natalia Dudareva (clockwise from bottom), John Morgan, Rohit Jaini and Joshua Widhalm could overturn the textbook model for how scent-producing volatiles travel through plant cells to the ...