• sesquiterpenes
• plant-insect interaction
• Lobesia botrana
• Arabidopsis thaliana
• grapevine
• Vitis vinifera
• ,VOCs

The potential of plant Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in pest control has been recently investigated opening new perspectives for managing pest insects.
With the discovery of terpene-synthase gene families and considering the possibility to perform genetic transformation in several plant species, it is now possible to study the role of specific VOCs and their impact on insects behavior in in vivo systems.
Given the ease of transformation of Arabidopsis thaliana, the presence in it of a metabolic pathway for the biosynthesis of terpenes, the possibility to use simple detection techniques for volatile compounds, we decided to use Arabidopsis to study the potential role of some specific sesquiterpenes involved in the attraction of grapevine moth: (E)-β-caryophyllene and (E)-β-farnesene.
Although we know the volatile blend that attracts the moth consists of many compounds, we started with the creation of transformed plants that emit an individual volatile to study their specific role.