Herbivory‐induced jasmonates constrain plant sugar accumulation and growth by antagonizing gibberellin signaling and not by promoting secondary metabolite production

What is it about?

Heading: Induced defenses do not reduce growth or deplete carbon reserves in herbivore attacked plants It is often assumed that plants need to make a decision whether to grow or to defend, as they may not have enough resources to do both at the same time. We investigated this concept in the context of sugars as energy storage molecules and secondary metabolites as inducible defenses. We found that plants which are attacked by herbivores grow less, produce more secondary metabolites and show a reduction in sugar levels. However, our experiments also show that sugars and growth are not reduced because of the increased energy investment into secondary metabolites: The application of growth hormones was sufficient to create plants which grew normally, had normal sugar levels and produced the same levels of secondary metabolites upon herbivore attack. Thus, plants can grow and defend at the same time.

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