Implications of the foliar phytochemical diversity of the avocado crop Persea americana cv. Hass in its susceptibility to pests and pathogens.

ABSTRACT: Phytochemical diversity (PD) can be considered as a defensive trait; it can operate through single plant secondary metabolites or usually as complex mixtures of them. We tested the more diversity-better defense hypothesis correlating the leaf plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) with the incidence of plant enemies on Hass avocado trees. We expected a negative correlation between the occurrence of plant enemies and PD metrics. Also, as intraspecific PSMs polymorphisms in plant populations are common, we studied the incidence of plant enemies on Hass avocado trees representing chemical variants (chemotypes). We expected a differential incidence of plant enemies among trees grouped by their mono and sesquiterpene + phenylpropanoid chemotypes. We analyzed foliar hexane extracts from 236 trees in

SUBMITTER: Espinosa-Garcia FJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8759378 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature