Domestication has profoundly influenced the evolution of plant metabolism, shaping the balance between productivity and ecological resilience. To explore the biochemical consequences of this process, we performed an integrative metabolomic comparison between the domesticated Sechium edule var. albus minor and its wild relative S. edule 653-d. Using complementary non-targeted UHPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS and targeted HPLC analyses, we identified over 15,800 spectral features and 150 putative metabolites revealing a marked reorganization of metabolic networks. Principal component, hierarchical clustering, and tanglegram analyses confirmed a deep topological divergence between genotypes, indicating that domestication reprogrammed metabolite associations and reduced overall chemical connectivity. Pathway enrichment analysis showed that the domesticated genotype prioritized primary metabolism particularly lipid, nucleotide, and amino acid biosynthesis while the wild form retained a metabolism dominated by flavonoid, terpenoid, and phenylpropanoid pathways associated with defense, antioxidant activity, and environmental plasticity. Targeted quantification validated these patterns, evidencing a metabolic trade-off between nutritional optimization and stress resilience. Collectively, our results demonstrate that S. edule domestication entailed a functional shift from chemical diversity to energetic efficiency, providing a metabolomic framework to understand how artificial selection reshapes plant secondary metabolism and highlighting the value of wild germplasm for restoring resilience and nutraceutical potential in cultivated species.
Espinosa-Torres et al. (Thu,) studied this question.