4.6 Article

Intentional and unintentional selection during plant domestication: herbivore damage, plant defensive traits and nutritional quality of fruit and seed crops

Journal

NEW PHYTOLOGIST
Volume 231, Issue 4, Pages 1586-1598

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/nph.17452

Keywords

crop damage; fruit and seed crops; herbivory; herbivore; metaanalysis; nutritional quality; plant defense; plant domestication; wild relatives

Categories

Funding

  1. National Fund for Research of Argentina [PICT 2018-02145]

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The study found that crops are more susceptible to herbivore attacks compared to their wild relatives, mainly due to lower levels of herbivore defensive traits, especially indirect defenses. Additionally, the nutritional quality of crops was lower than that of wild relatives, potentially leading to increased biomass loss to herbivores as they increase consumption to meet their nutritional requirements. This research provides important insights into how changes in defensive and nutritional traits following domestication could impact crop susceptibility to herbivore attacks.
Greater susceptibility to herbivory can arise as an effect of crop domestication. One proposed explanation is that defenses decreased intentionally or unintentionally during the domestication process, but evidence for this remains elusive. An alternative but nonexclusive explanation is presumed selection for higher nutritional quality. We used a metaanalytical approach to examine susceptibility to herbivores in fruit and seed crops and their wild relatives. Our analyses provide novel insights into the mechanisms of increased susceptibility by evaluating whether it can be attributed to either a reduction in herbivore defensive traits, including direct/indirect and constitutive/inducible defenses, or an increase in the nutritional content of crops. The results confirm higher herbivory and lower levels of all types of defenses in crops compared to wild relatives, although indirect defenses were more affected than direct ones. Contrary to expectations, nutritional quality was lower in crops than in wild relatives, which may enhance biomass loss to herbivores if they increase consumption to meet nutritional requirements. Our findings represent an important advance in our understanding of how changes in defensive and nutritional traits following domestication could influence, in combination or individually, crop susceptibility to herbivore attacks.

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