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Effects of Exogenous Application of Salicylic Acid and Methyl Dihydrojasmonate on Insect Herbivory

CSEF · 2026 Plant Biology (Senior Division)

Tien Ngo, Khang Le, Morgan Vuho

Overview

Pesticides are used to repel unwanted organisms, but ultimately harm crops in the process. Some active ingredients used in pesticides lead to widespread environmental issues by accumulating contamination in the soil, water and air, which poses health risks to most organisms. Most plants inherently contain the Systemic Acquired Resistance (SAR) and Induced Systemic Resistance (ISR) mechanisms, which help plants respond against attacks. Our project activates these two pathways by introducing its activation chemical. SAR corresponds to salicylic acid (SA), and for ISR, we used methyl-dihydrojasmonate (MDJ), a derivative of jasmonic acid (JA). We pregrew plants and separated them into 5 groups: 1mM SA with ethanol and water, 1mM MDJ with ethanol and water, 1mM SA and 1mM MDJ with ethanol and water, and the following control groups: water only, and ethanol solution. We sprayed the solutions onto the isolated plants and left it for 24 hours to prime for their defense response. Mealworms were introduced into a choice chamber pitting the testing group vs the control, leaving them for 2 days to observe how they deter insect herbivory. After our data collection of taking pictures of the before and after results, and the feces count of both sides of the chamber, we ran it through ImageJ, an image analyzer. We then run statistical tests such as the ANOVA test, Kruskal-Wallis test, and individual T-Tests to compare our results with one another and their control. All of our statistical tests have the results of a p-value that is greater than 0.05, disproving our alternative hypothesis, suggesting that the relationship between natural plant defense mechanisms are not sufficient enough to deter generalist species.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2026 Plant Biology (Senior Division) · Entry S-18-03

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