Impact of abiotic stresses on volatile organic compound production of field crops and grasslands

Abiotic and biotic stresses are known to alter biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emission from plants. With the climate and global change, BVOC emissions are likely to increase. This increase on BVOC emissions could be driven by many environmental parameters like temperature, ozone and light availability for photosynthesis although it is still difficult to predict the impact of some environmental parameters, environmental controls on BVOC emission being species and BVOC-dependent. These BVOC are involved in a wide range of interactions of plants with their environment and these interactions could be affected by the global change. Moreover, BVOC also play a key role in the atmospheric chemistry and may contribute to ozone formation and an increase in methane lifetime, strengthening the global change. Yet, due to technical limitation, there are few studies examining the impact of multiple co-occurring stresses on BVOC emission at the ecosystem level although stress combination is probably more ecologically realistic in field.
In the CROSTVOC (for CROp STress VOC) project, the impact of abiotic stresses (e.g. heat, drought, ozone and grazing) on BVOC emission will be investigated for field crops (maize and wheat) and grassland both at the ecosystem and plant scale.