Recent advances in plant insect monitoring using volatile profiling strategy

Insect attacks in crops or forests are now a global concern, they have reduced agricultural production and caused forest degradation for a long time, leading to great economic and ecological damage. However, conventional visual and molecular technology-based approaches can hardly apply to the early or large-scale detection of insect infestation in plants, especially those plants with internal damage. Plants always make metabonomic responses to insect damage, and herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) generally change significantly among the plant metabolites. In addition, the insect can also release volatiles, especially during certain biological activities. For instance, male and female adults secrete pheromones to attract the opposite sex before mating. The volatile profiling strategy has been extensively used in plant insect monitoring, this paper reviews their applications in the plant-produced HIPVs and insect-produced pheromones. In addition, different chemometrics methods applied to plant damage discrimination are summarized.