Fruits Can Alert Chief Crops About Pest Attacks – Tomato Study

Aug, 2021 - By WMR

It is shown in a study that the tomato fruit can transmit upstream electric alarm message to the mother plant.

Since fruits are drooping from the stem before slipping, one can get the illusion that the fruit cannot interact with the mother plant. However, a recent study reveals that, if grub worms target, tomato fruits are able to deliver warnings to their parent plant. As the sap mainly runs from the plant to the fruit, and not the other way round, the fact that fruit can transmit information to the plant has been unclear for a long time. The new research which was aimed at addressing this issue was initiated with tomato plants in the Faraday cage by researchers from Brazil’s Federal University of Pelotas. This restricted all the electromagnetic fields that were outside of the system.

The electrodes were affixed in connection with the fruits, at the ends of the branches of the plant. The scientists used these electrodes to evaluate electric signal in branches before, during and after a 24-hour period in which Helicoverpa Armigera worms ambushed the fruits. In order to monitor regularities within the transcribed signals, machine learning algorithm was used. The tendencies that were discovered after and before the worm attacks showed a known difference. Furthermore, self-protective biochemical reactions throughout the plant bodies were noted, implying that they were stimulated by the signals that were sent by the fruit.

‘Since the fruits are the core components of the plant, consisting of the leaves and stems of the same tissue, then why can’t they interact with the plant, and notify it as the regular tissues of the plant notifies it about what they experience?’ asks the researcher on this study. The findings of this study showed that the fruits can share valuable data with its parent plant like the attacking of worms, which is a very serious problem for the plant. The parent plant cam probably prepare itself for such conditions due to sharing of this information. The researchers are now planning to study this theory on other plants as well.