When corn is planted very closely together and later uprooted, barley and grass seeded in the same area has better defenses against plagues. This discovery, published in Science, opens the door to the use of the plant’s own components as pesticide. When the fourth leaf emerged, they removed the plants, but kept the soil, sowing new seeds into it. Martín did her thesis on volatiles in potatoes, and now she is studying them in other plants, such as cotton. She observed how the attack of moth larvae on potato plants induced the release of volatiles, which in turn activated the defenses of other plants, making them more resistant.