Trade-offs between growth, storage and defense in plants under carbon limitation

The fate of C, i.e. C allocation, plays a fundamental role in growth, survival and reproduction of organisms, particularly sessile organisms like plants that cannot escape harsh environmental conditions thus have to deal with stress with locally limited resources. Rapidly changing climate in recent years, for example drought and heat-enhanced insect outbreaks, and elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations as well as rising air temperature, have sparked our interest in understanding, among others, how plants allocate C into growth, nonstructural carbohydrates (NSC) storage, secondary metabolites (SM) and biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC). By reducing CO2 thus forcing plants into a severe resource trade-off, I provide empirical evidence for the allocation priorities and the underlying control mechanisms. ...