Plants can't run away to avoid being eaten, so instead they employ a variety of chemical defenses to keep herbivores at bay. Understanding plant chemical defenses is critical for keeping crops healthy, and for answering a variety of more academic questions about ecology and evolution. However, current techniques for assessing plant chemical defenses are time consuming and require impractically large amounts of plant tissue. In research presented in a recent issue of Applications in Plant Sciences, Dr. Chandra Jack and colleagues devised a new technique for assessing plant chemical defenses that is less laborious and more practical for a variety of experimental applications.
* This article was originally published here
