A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, has discovered that strigolactones, a class of novel plant hormones, mediate the fine-tuning of the production plant defensive substances in the stem of plants of the wild tobacco species Nicotiana attenuata. In a cooperative project with partners in China and Korea, they found that strigolactones and their crosstalk with other hormones involved in plant defense were crucial for tobacco plants’ ability to tolerate insects that live inside the stem. Plants that are no longer able to produce strigolactones also have altered concentrations of jasmontates and auxins and consequently a reduced resistance against the stem-boring larvae of the weevil Trichobaris mucorea.
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Source: Phys.org