Articles
DOES THE RESEARCH ON PLANT PHENOLS HOLD OUT PROSPECTS IN INTEGRATED PLANT PRODUCTION? – CONCLUSION
The participants were:
E. Elstner, Chairman
G. Forkmann, Genetics and Plant Breeding
H. Goldbach, Crop Science and Plant Nutrition
H. Greim, Toxicology
R. Hain, Chemical Industry / Biotechnology
U. Matern, Biochemistry
R. Mengel, Chemical Industry / Phytopathology
H. Sandermann, Ecology
W. Schlösser, Phytopathology
In summary, there was general agreement that basic research is a prerequisite for the development of field-applicable techniques based on the utilization of plant phenol metabolism.
However, comprehensive scientific research programs aimed at the realization of such applications are costly and would not be sponsored easily.
Rather, it is expected that basic scientific research on plant phenolics will be restricted to individual scientific experiments carried out in a small and comparably inexpensive laboratory scale.
In the near future, development of phytochemicals based on phenolic leads with broad activity spectra against common pathogens was considered as one of the most promising strategies.
However, from a toxicological point of view, it was stated that "biological" pesticides such as plant extracts cannot ipso facto be assumed less toxic than synthetic ones.
This is mainly due to the fact that most plant extracts are complex mixtures of various compounds the toxicity of which cannot be evaluated easily.
In the long run, other techniques might turn out superior to the common spraying of synthetic pesticides or modified phenolic leads.
In this context, preinfectional stimulation of polyphenol synthesis by conventional breeding programs, gene transfer or elicitation techniques as well as a rapid, local and transient activation of biosynthetic pathways in the case of an infection were suggested.