Chemical SOS not just for farm, lab plants
By Susan Milius
The chemical screams for help that scientists have detected from agricultural plants under attack by pests in lab settings have now been heard in the wild.
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In Utah, a wild tobacco releases certain chemicals when attackers start chewing, report André Kessler and Ian T. Baldwin of the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany. When the researchers dabbed some of these defensive chemicals onto test plants, bugs that prey on the pests came to the rescue. The researchers report their findings in the March 16 Science.