Chemical signaling in cotton plants

Cotton crop cultivation uses a massive amount of pesticides. I am interested in unraveling chemical signaling in cotton plants, with the underlying idea that this knowledge could lead to the development of alternative agricultural strategies. Currently, I am trying to understand the temporal dynamics of constitutive and induced volatiles and their ecological implications in cotton. Using different varieties, we follow their response to damages caused by Spodoptera species with a PTR-MS. This proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometer allows us to monitor in real-time the simultaneous presence of various volatile compounds.