Pest resistance and Amino Acids

This book was published 75 years ago, and it explores how crops can naturally be resistant to pests. Dr. Painter, who wrote the book, says the lack of specific food materials, including vitamins or materials analogous to vitamins, could be a source of adverse effects of the feeding of insects on resistant plants. The absence or inaccessibility of any of these substances may be related to resistance. He says that the nutritive requirements of insects that feed on green plants is virtually unknown. So at this point in 1951, they did not know what the nutritional requirements of pests were. So let's jump to this meta-analysis published in 2022 to see what we know now about the nutritional requirements of pests. 4 of these studies examined plant amino acid content and reported similar trends across 2 plant families. Amino acid content of resistant plants is lower than the amino acid content of susceptible plants. Decreasing palatability is a key resistance category. So we know that reducing amino acid availability in the plant sap is key to reducing the food source for the insects. Next, we'll look at how we can actually change the level of amino acids in the crop with our fertilization practices.