{"id":3199,"date":"2025-06-26T14:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T13:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/?p=3199"},"modified":"2026-03-12T10:55:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:55:48","slug":"tomato-plants-sticky-self-defence-minefields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/2025\/06\/26\/tomato-plants-sticky-self-defence-minefields\/","title":{"rendered":"Tomato plants\u2019 sticky self-defence \u2018minefields\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Many plants use tiny \u2018hairs\u2019 called trichomes as a first line of defence against plant-eating insects. New research by experimental physicists and plant physiologists at the University of Amsterdam shows how tomato plants use these hairs as lightning-fast sticky booby traps. Curiously, they found that cultivated tomatoes have become less sensitive to insect contact than their wild relatives, weakening their natural defences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Trichomes
Trichomes sticking out from the edge of a wild tomato leaf (Solanum habrochaites). Image courtesy of Jared Popowski, University of Amsterdam.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Plants have needed to protect themselves from insects and other small herbivores long before humans began to apply pesticides. Trichomes are an ingenious defensive structure that is attracting more attention in the plant biology community. These tiny hair-like structures cover the stems and leaves of many plants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tip of each trichome contains an internal cavity filled with sticky, toxic fluid. Lined up next to each other, the trichomes form a biological minefield. When an insect touches a trichome tip and applies sufficient force, it breaks open and releases the stored fluid that then covers the insect\u2019s legs and body. The fluid is viscous like thick honey, forming stretchy filaments that slow the insect down and deliver potentially lethal doses of chemicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How exactly this works was recently discovered by an interdisciplinary collaboration at the UvA between experimental physicists from the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute<\/a> (WZI) and plant physiologists at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences<\/a> (SILS). Their findings were published<\/a> in the Journal of Experimental Botany in June 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPlant biologists had long known that trichomes burst to release defensive fluids, but the actual mechanics of how this rupture works had never been studied before. It required precision physics tools and approaches to measure the tiny forces and lightning-fast timescales involved,\u201d says first author Jared Popowski. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team used high-speed cameras and force sensors in their research. They found that the trichomes can burst open within one millisecond after a bug makes contact. Triggering a trichome burst only requires a force of around six millionths of a Newton \u2013 roughly the weight of a small grain of sand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis investigation is yet another powerful example of how looking at a biological question through a different disciplinary lens can uncover mechanisms that would otherwise remain hidden,\u201d says Mazi Jalaal, group leader of the Fluid Lab<\/a> at the WZI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Petra Bleeker from the Plant Physiology<\/a> group (SILS) adds: \u201cWe were fascinated by the same subject, looked at it from our different perspectives, asked slightly different questions and got jointly excited by the findings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A thrips struggling among the trichomes (hair-like structures) on the stem of a wild tomato plant (Solanum habrochaites). Image courtesy of Jared Popowski, University of Amsterdam, and Journal of Experimental Botany.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Have we cultivated weak plants?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Surprisingly, the research team found that cultivated tomatoes have become less sensitive to insect contact than their wild relatives. If the trichomes don\u2019t burst when an insect touches them, the defence mechanism fails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This suggests that breeding for other traits \u2013 such as fruit size, fruit consistency and high yield \u2013 may have weakened the crop\u2019s natural defence system. Worryingly, 20\u201330%<\/a> of global food crops are lost to pests, at huge economic cost and despite the widespread use of pesticides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUltimately, this research aims to help reduce our reliance on dangerous and expensive chemical pesticides,\u201d says Popowski. Not only can they threaten biodiversity and the natural ecosystem services we rely on, but some pests are also developing resistance to conventional treatments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new findings could help plant breeders develop more pest-resistant crops by understanding how these natural defence mechanisms work at the microscopic level. By identifying the genes responsible for stronger trichome defences in wild tomato varieties, scientists could potentially breed these traits back into commercial crops without sacrificing the desirable characteristics like large fruit size and high yields that farmers depend on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publication<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Glandular trichome rupture in tomato plants is an ultra-fast & sensitive defense mechanism against insects<\/a>, Jared Popowski, Lucas Warma, Alicia Abarca Cifuentes, Petra Bleeker and Maziyar Jalaal, Journal of Experimental Botany<\/em>, eraf257 (2025) Video of a thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis) nymph rupturing a single trichome on a section of wild tomato stem (Solanum habrochaites). Video courtesy of Jared Popowski, University of Amsterdam.


Video of a thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis) nymph rupturing a single trichome on a section of wild tomato stem (Solanum habrochaites). Video courtesy of Jared Popowski, University of Amsterdam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/PMZooRORyp8<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many plants use tiny \u2018hairs\u2019 called trichomes as a first line of defence against plant-eating insects. New research by experimental physicists and plant physiologists at the University of Amsterdam shows how tomato plants use these hairs as lightning-fast sticky booby traps. Curiously, they found that cultivated tomatoes have become less sensitive to insect contact than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,10,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3402,"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3199\/revisions\/3402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iop.fnwi.uva.nl\/scm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}