WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A Purdue University team of scientists upended a long-held assumption about how plant volatile compounds, the chemicals that are responsible for scent, move to the outside of ...

Microorganisms are important factors in shaping our environment. One key characteristic that has been neglected for a long time is the ability of microorganisms to release chemically diverse volatile ...

Purdue University research suggests active biological mechanisms transport scent and taste compounds known as volatiles from plant cells to the atmosphere, a finding that could overturn the textbook ...

To secure food resources, sustainability of agriculture must be increased. Such efforts also depend on insights from plant ecology. Based on field studies on tobacco plants, researchers demonstrated ...

Researchers have used the chemical fingerprints of zinc contained in meteorites to determine the origin of volatile elements on Earth. The results suggest that without 'unmelted' asteroids, there may ...

If you’ve enjoyed the smell of fresh cut grass, you may have unwittingly eavesdropped on a conversation between plants. The smell is caused by a group of compounds called green leaf volatiles (GLVs) ...

When plants are in distress or being fed on by insects, they have been known to send out sensory volatile cues that alert organisms in the area — such as birds — that they are in need of help. While ...

(This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Subscribe now!) Volatiles are elements or compounds that change from solid or ...