Author Spotlight: In Vitro Co-Culture System of Pine Shoots and Pinewood Nematode for Studying Host Volatile Response

We have established an In Vitro co-culture system of Pine shoots with the Pinewood nematodes to market and study changes in host volatile response to these phytoparasites. Greenhouse biohouses allow control of environmental variability. However, the genetic diversity of Pine seedlings still influences the resulting volatile profiles.

In Vitro Pine shoots infected with the Pinewood nematodes allow sampling of easily obtainable plant clones, which reduces the influence of variability coming from Pine genetic diversity. Plant volatiles are isolated by hydrodistillation in distillation extraction, but headspace techniques allow the profiling of volatiles emitted by the plant. Resin-packed columns will be used as a non-invasive technique to profile volatiles emitted by In Vitro ground Pine infected with Pine nematode for direct analysis of the chemical interplay between the host and the phytoparasite.