Plant chat decoded

A plant can’t flee when a hungry animal chomps down on its leaves, stem, or roots. It can, however, release a cloud of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to dissuade predation and cry out to its neighbors, “Start armoring up!” But herbivory-induced VOCs have a life of their own in the atmosphere. Researchers know that plant VOCs readily transform into secondary organic aerosol (SOA) , a mixture of aqueous or semisolid particles that form when gases are oxidized. Whether these particles participate in plant-to-plant communication has been a mystery. Newly published work may change that. “We found for the first time that secondary organic aerosol can actually have a role in mediating interactions between plants,” says chemical ecologist James Blande of the University of Eastern Finland ( Science 2024, DOI: 10.1126/science.ado6779 ). To study SOA-mediated plant communication, Blande and his team captured the VOCs emitted by Scots pine seedlings whose roots