Strawberry Suckers

If you’re a strawberry growing in a country in the tropics, you’re probably living out your little strawberry life in a green house. It’s easier to control climate with green houses, to make sure all the plants get just enough water and sun and to control humidity levels, but this is not a life without complication.

Pests easily take over green houses and can turn once vibrantly green strawberry crops into withering, masses of yellowed leaves. The spider mite is often the perpetrator in these instances of crop failure. These tiny, tiny insects are like vampires, sucking the liquid out of the cells on the underside of strawberry leaves. The loss of intracellular fluid is deadly, not just to the cell, but, if enough cells are damaged, to the entire plant. Pesticides are usually used to control for spider mite invasion, but using too many pesticides can contaminate the strawberry fruits, making them dangerous for consumption. The safest way to prevent spider mite infestation is to grow strawberry plant cultivars that can defend themselves against spider mite fangs.

Plants can take on two possible pest resistance strategies, one being constitutive and the other being induced. Some plants only resist when they have been attacked, meaning they have to be prompted to release any sort of chemical defense compounds. Other plants always have those compounds at the ready. The proactive strawberry plant stores it’s defense compounds in glands at the ends of the tiny hairs, or trichomes, on the back side of its leaves. All strawberry plants have these tiny hairs, but not all of them have the protective glands. Those that do are able to keep the spider mites at bay and they’re the ones that you want in your green house.

Source

Figueiredo, Alex Sandro Torre, et al. “The role of glandular and non-glandular trichomes in the negative interactions between strawberry cultivars and spider mite.” Arthropod-Plant Interactions 7.1 (2013): 53–58.