PA treatment reduces the population growth of arthropod herbivores
on tomato
The reproduction of three arthropods pests of tomato, the mites T.
urticae and A. lycopersici (Vervaet, De Vis, De Clercq & Van
Leeuwen 2021) and the insect F. occidentalis , was significantly
lower on PA-pretreated tomato plants. As shown in Figure 2 ,T. urticae had 54% fewer living offspring (P < 0.001)
on PA-treated plants, A. lycopersici 63% fewer (P = 0.002) andF. occidentalis 40% fewer (P < 0.001). PA similarly
induced resistance against F. occidentalis in pepper
(Capsicum annuum L. ‘Cayenne Long Slim’), as shown inSupplementary Figure S4. As PA is not acutely toxic to these
arthropods (Table 1 ), their reduced reproductive rate is likely
caused by PA-IR.