Project
Plant-plant communication through volatiles
Plant volatiles provide information on the status of the volatile emitting plant. For example, plants that are attacked by pathogens or insects release a different blend of volatiles compared to non-attacked individuals.
Background
Volatiles that signal attack do for example attract the natural enemies of the attackers and can prime neighbour plants for defense. The priming leads to a stronger and faster response to attackers than non-primed plants. Volatiles released by healthy individuals affect a growth response in neighbour plants in this way affecting competition between the neighbour and emitter plants. Despite this knowledge there is a large number of questions to be answered to get further insight in the role of volatiles in plant-plant interactions. For example:
- Is volatile communication impaired when plants grown in competition?
- Is the plant response to volatiles dose dependent?
- How are different volatiles or other cues of plant-plant communication such as light reflection, brief touching, integrated?
- Do some volatile signals have priority over others?
- How do volatiles affect performance of species mixtures?
- How do volatiles interaction between plants affect performance of herbivore insects and their natural enemies?
Collaboration with SLU
This research will be done in close collaboration with Velemir Ninkovic from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). He has good experimental facilities to test these and related questions. A compensation of a part of the costs of living may be covered by the Erasmus program.
We are looking for highly motivated students with good experimental skills that are willing to stay in Sweden for at least three to four months. In case of an MSc thesis, writing of the proposal and report is possible in Wageningen and examination will take place in Wageningen. Experiments can be done from February until November.