A Comparison of the Effects of and on Plant-Aphid Interactions.

The mutation in tomato (), which disrupts function of FATTY ACID DESATURASE 7 (FAD7), confers resistance to the potato aphid () and modifies the plant’s C6 volatile profiles. To investigate whether C6 volatiles play a role in resistance, (), which encodes a critical enzyme in C6 volatile synthesis, was silenced in wild-type tomato plants and mutants. Silencing in wild-type tomato increased potato aphid host preference and reproduction on 5-week old plants but had no influence on 3-week old plants. The mutation, in contrast, conferred strong aphid resistance at both 3 and 5 weeks, and silencing in did not compromise this aphid resistance. Moreover, a mutation in the gene in also conferred resistance to the green peach aphid () in a genetic background that carries a null mutation in . These results indicate that contributes to certain forms of aphid resistance in tomato, but that the effects of on aphids in tomato and Arabidopsis are distinct from and independent of .