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Plant-insect chemical communication and its behavior control

Du Jiawei

Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology,Chinese Academy of Sciences.Shanghai 200032

Abstract

Plant volatile chemicals play a decisive role in the plant-insect chemical communication, and regulating insect behaviors, such as attracting insect toward host plant, promoting insect feeding or orienting insect to oviposition site or pollination of flowers and defense. Several plants, when injured by herbivorous insects emit chemical signals to attract natural enemies of these insects. These chemical signals are blends of volatile terpenoids among other compounds that are released by plants, leading insect to distinguish between infested an un-infested plants. Although the use of pheromones for insect pest management has attracted much more attention than plant volatiles, it should be emphasized that the first efforts to apply semiochemicals for crop protection were made with natural plant volatile. Using plant volatile for monitoring and controlling insect pests, simple inexpensive sticky traps have become standard monitoring tools for many insect pests in recent years. The technology of use of plant volatile in intergrated pest management of insect pests appears to have virtually limitless possibilities and can provide the impetus for development of new and novel methods of insect pest suppression. Genetic manipulation of genes responsible for the synthesis of plant volatile, with special repellent odor, or some specific volatile for controlling insect behavior has been suggested.

Key words: Plant-insect interaction;Chemical communication;Behavior control

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Citing This Article：

Du Jiawei. Plant-insect chemical communication and its behavior control. Acta Physiol Sin 2001; 53 (3): (in Chinese with English abstract).