Pourquoi les plantes ont-elles une odeur ?, Jean-Claude Caissard

As part of the webinar series "Plants Also Have Their Secrets: Specialized Metabolites" organized by the Scientific Council of the French National Horticultural Society in January 2026 Part 3 — Communication and Attraction Metabolites Why Do Plants Have Scents?, Jean-Claude Caissard Plants have scents that have always fascinated humankind and have long been used in medicine, cosmetics, and simply for pleasure. But what purpose do these scents serve in nature? Most of them are used to communicate with insects and other plants. What is the nature of this communication? What are plants saying? How can we study this language? This lecture addresses, among other things, a broader discipline called "chemical ecology," a science that, for several decades, has been dedicated to deciphering the most common language in nature: the chemical language.