Domestication provides durum wheat with protection from locust herbivory

Lower plant resistance to herbivores following domestication has been suggested as the main cause for higher feeding damage in crops than in wild progenitors. While herbivore compensatory feeding has also been proposed as a possible mechanism for raised damage in crops with low nutritional quality, predictions regarding the effects of plant domestication on nutritional quality for herbivores remain unclear. In particular, data on primary metabolites, even major macronutrients, measured in the organs consumed by herbivores, are scarce. In this study, we used a collection of 10 accessions of wild ancestors and 10 accessions of modern progenies of Triticum turgidum to examine whether feeding damage and selectivity by nymphs of Locusta migratoria primarily depended on five leaf traits related to structural resistance or nutrient profiles. Our results unexpectedly showed that locusts favored wild ancestors over domesticated accessions and that leaf toughness and nitrogen and soluble protein contents increased with the domestication process. Furthermore, the quantitative relationship between soluble protein and digestible carbohydrates was found to poorly meet the specific requirements of the herbivore, in all wheat accessions, both wild and modern. The increase in leaf structural resistance to herbivores in domesticated tetraploid wheat accessions suggested that resource allocation trade-offs between growth and herbivory resistance may have been disrupted by domestication in the vegetative organs of this species. Since domestication did not result in a loss of nutritional quality in the leaves of the tetraploid wheat, our results rather provides evidence for a role of the content of plants in nonnutritive nitrogenous secondary compounds, possibly deterrent or toxic, at least for grasshopper herbivores.