These odours are blends of volatile secondary compounds, including terpenes, derivatives of fatty acids, and aromatic phenolic compounds.
Throughout their life cycles, plants release diverse blends of volatile compounds that play crucial roles in pollinator attraction, defense and communication.
Plants release specific blends of volatile chemicals in response to insect herbivory, thereby attracting the herbivore's enemies [1] [3].
In the present study it was shown that not all bacterial species produce blends of volatile organic compounds that attract A. gambiae and that some bacterial species produce odour blends that are more attractive than others.
For example, Youngsteadt et al. [14] identified a blend of volatile compounds from P. macrostachya seeds that attracted C. femoratus, and chromatographic fractions of P. macrostachya extract that elicited seed-carrying behavior.
Over the past two decades it has been documented that plants produce blends of volatile compounds in vegetative tissues in response to damage and herbivore attack [4], [6], [32] [38], suggesting that these substances act in plant defense [39].
In many species, female moths release blends of volatile attractive pheromones to attract courting males.
The blend of volatile chemicals derived from common cutworm -infested tomato plants contains only one volatile alcohol, namely (Z -3-hexenol, and this would explain why (Z -3-hexenol vicianoside was the only glycosylated compound detected in the plants exposed to this particular blend of volatiles.
Upon herbivore damage, plants typically emit a large, diverse blend of volatile compounds that have been shown to have importance in direct defense against herbivores and the attraction of herbivore enemies.
In a previous study, we showed that T. viridana avoided T-oaks, which may have occurred because their blend of volatile organic compounds contained a higher ratio of sesquiterpenes and higher emission rates of α-farnesene and germacrene D [ 29].
The changes in the in vitro product spectra of OryzaTPS1 proteins also correlated closely to the changes in in vivo blends of volatile terpenes released from insect-damaged rice plants.
