Repellence or attraction: secondary metabolites in pepper mediate attraction and defense against Spodoptera litura.

Background: Resistance to insect pests is an important self-defense characteristic of pepper plants. However, the resistance of different pepper cultivars to Spodoptera litura larvae, one of the main insect pest species on pepper, is not well understood.

Results: Among seven pepper cultivars evaluated, cayenne pepper 'FXBX' showed the highest repellency to third instar S.

Chinese Cabbage Changes Its Release of Volatiles to Defend against .

Plants respond to herbivorous insect attacks by releasing volatiles that directly harm the herbivore or that indirectly harm the herbivore by attracting its natural enemies. Although the larvae of (the tobacco cutworm) are known to induce the release of host plant volatiles, the effects of such volatiles on host location by and by the parasitoid , a natural enemy of larvae, are poorly understood. Here, we found that both the regurgitate of larvae and -infested cabbage leaves attracted .