Amazing stuff!
"All plants constantly release volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, into the air ... But a new study suggests that healthy plants may also be sniffing out the competition.
Researchers tested three barley varieties with different growth speeds: a slower-growing cultivar ... an intermediate grower ... and a fast-growing one named ... Over 25 days, the team exposed plants to each other’s VOCs and tracked both physical growth and changes in gene activity.
Based on the type of airborne chemicals released by the specimens nearby, the plants grew more or less aggressively. Barley exposed to scents from fast growers bulked up their biomass, while plants surrounded by slower-growing neighbors dialed themselves back too. Being around slower growers boosted stress response pathways, while fast-growing neighbors triggered genes involved in cell growth and DNA replication. ..."
From the abstract:
"Plants continuously emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can influence the physiology and behavior of neighboring plants. While the ecological role of stress-induced VOCs is well established, the function of constitutive VOCs released by undamaged plants in mediating plant-plant interactions remains less understood.
Here, we demonstrate that barley plants can detect the growth rate of undamaged conspecific neighbors through constitutive VOCs and respond by modulating their growth-defense trade-off accordingly.
Exposure to volatiles from cultivars with contrasting growth (slow or fast) triggered distinct shifts in biomass accumulation and gene expression in receiver plants, whereas VOCs from cultivars with similar growth rates had negligible effects.
Transcriptomic analysis revealed cultivar-specific transcriptional reprogramming of growth- and defense-related pathways, suggesting that constitutive VOCs convey information about emitter identity and competitive vigour that receiver plants use to adaptively reallocate resources and prime stress responses in anticipation of competition. These findings uncover a previously unrecognized role of constitutive VOCs as reliable cues of emitter identity and vigor, mediating adaptive responses in neighboring plants under competitive scenarios."
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