Chemical defenses are produced by many plants both constitutively and inducibly after wounding or pest attack and are thought to play a key role in plant resistance to natural enemies. The induction of chemical defenses can be very effective at protecting plants from damage, and biochemical and genetic manipulations of crop plants to heighten their expression of induced defenses are being increasingly utilized as part of many plant protection strategies. Further work will continue to characterize phenotypic and genetic variation in defense production and wound-inducibility in the Brassicaceae across species, cultivars, populations, and environments, and to further examine the role of these chemicals in plant defense.
Garlic mustard is an aggressive inader of forest understories.
As an introduced species, it lacks specialist herbivores that were left behind in Europe, and appears to receive little damage by native herbivores. Part of its success in North America may stem from its relative escape from herbivory. We are following up this work with some classic common garden experiments to examine sources of variation in defensive chemistry in this species. Included in this study will be an analysis of the local and regional genetic diversity of this species using RAPD-PCR techniques, in collaboration with Dr. Dan Krane and honor's undergrad students, Sarah Schmidt and Melissa Strain. Ecological Tradeoffs Plants use a few distinct, but partly interdependent, pathways to signal natural enemy attack and to activate defense genes.