Abstract
Insect pests cause significant global agricultural damage and lead to major financial and environmental costs. Crops contain intrinsic defenses to protect themselves from such pests, including a wide array of specialized secondary metabolite-based defense chemicals. These chemicals can be induced upon attack (phytoalexins) or are constitutive (phytoanticipins), and can have a direct impact on the pests or be used indirectly to attract their natural enemies. They form part of a global arms race between the crops and their insect pests, with the insects developing methods of suppression, avoidance, detoxification, or even capture of their hosts defensive chemicals. Harnessing and optimizing the chemical defense capabilities of crops has the potential to aid in the continuing struggle to enhance or improve agricultural pest management. Such strategies include breeding for the restoration of defense chemicals from ancestral varieties, or cross-species transfer of defense metabolite production.
Highlights
In order to survive and reproduce, plants must be able to defend themselves from attack.Such attacks come from a range of organisms including microbes and animals, but some of the most predominant consumers of plants are insect herbivores
Some examples are provided of how insects achieve this, and strategies are discussed for enhancing crop defense chemicals through breeding, engineering, and cross-species transfer of genes
Advances in metabolomics and genomics have led to an increased awareness of the sheer scope and possibilities inherent in plant defense chemicals
Summary
In order to survive and reproduce, plants must be able to defend themselves from attack. Plant defense chemicals can be grouped by whether they are inducible or constitutively produced These classes were characterized based on their response to microbial pathogens and were termed phytoalexins and phytoanticipins, respectively. They were defined as follows: phytoalexins “low molecular weight, antimicrobial compounds that are both synthesized by and accumulated in plants after exposure to microorganisms” [7], and phytoanticipins “low molecular weight antimicrobial compounds present in plants before challenge by microorganisms or produced after infection solely from preexisting constituents” [8] As many of these defense compounds are effective against multiple types of organisms, these definitions have since been broadened to include molecules that respond to various biological threats including insect pests. Some examples are provided of how insects achieve this, and strategies are discussed for enhancing crop defense chemicals through breeding, engineering, and cross-species transfer of genes
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