Boechera stricta, belongs to mustard family Brassicaceae. It is restricted to higher elevations and faces both abiotic (e.g. drought) and biotic stressors (e.g. herbivore) at low elevation range limits (Rushworth et al. 2011). For understanding genetic controls on ecologically, these species are very important which provide further understanding of underlying mechanisms in natural populations as compared to artificial lab experiments. Boechera stricta is widely distributed in the western the United States. It is well adapted to diverse ecological conditions in whole United States. Therefore, this species is believed as an ideal to understand effects of biotic and abiotic stressors.
According to Schranz et al. (2005) and Song& …show more content…
Studying the combined effects of drought and herbivore can provide more information about the machenisms behind these stress responses. We studied both drought and herbivore and their combined effect on Boechera stricta. We had used two populations i.e. Black Hills (lower elevation) and Big Horns (high elevation) and two genotypes from each population. After a certain growth with similar conditions to all the plants, we started our treatment on 23rd dad and start stressing half of plants with drought and kept half as control. We watered drought stressed plants only once a week and twice a week to control treatment plants. After 4 weeks of continuous treatment, we exposed half of the plants from both drought and control to a general herbivore Spodoptera exigua and kept half again for control of herbivore. We exposed each plant with 3-4 larvae and allow them to feed for 3 days. After we checked feeding damage on leaves of each plant. We harvested our plants and extract defense compound Glucosinolates from each plant. According to Schranz et al. (2009), concentrations of defense compounds due to drought stress condition. According to our results, when only herbivore is present on plant in absence of drought conditions, ratio of concentration of defense chemicals is increasing. In contrast, when there are both herbivores as well as