Background Terpenoid volatiles play an important role in direct and indirect plant defense responses against herbivores, including in gramineous crops such as transgenic rice and corn. The conventional varieties of wheat, an important gramineous cereal crop, lack aphid-resistant genes. It is therefore, necessary to seek aphid-resistant genes by screening for potential terpenoid synthase genes in wheat germplasm resources. Results The result showed that aphid-damaged Octoploid Tirtitrigia emitted a higher amount of S-linalool, ent-kaurene, (+)-delta-cadinene, (3S,6E)- nerolidol compared to intact plant. In addition, (E)-β-caryophyllene, β‐Myrcene, (E)-4,8-dimethyl-1,3,7-nonatriene (DMNT) were new volatile terpenoids emitted by the damaged plant. Further olfactory responses tests showed that S-linalool significantly repelled Sitobion avenae (Fabricius). Using the Illumina sequencing platform, approximately 203.09 million high quality paired-end reads were obtained. After de novo assembly and quantitative assessment, a total of 182,348(74.8%) unigenes were annotated by alignment with public protein databases. Of these unigenes, 2,389 differentially expressed genes were identified between intact and damaged ears of Octoploid Trititrigia. The expression profile of 10 randomly selected TPSs was confirmed with RT-qPCR. Candidate genes involved in terpenes biosynthesis were identified showing significant transcript changes between intact and damaged plant ears of Octoploid Trititrigia. Also transcript abundances of terpenes biosynthetic pathway-related genes were positively correlated with the production of volatile terpenoids in ears. The unigenes of S-linalool synthase gene was mapped to the cloned cDNA WT008_M07 (AK333728) and WT013_P07 (AK335856) of the Chinese spring wheat cultivar. The predicted protein complete ORF sequence (TaLIS1/2) when compared with the S-linalool synthase gene of other species, contained an aspartate-rich region DDxxD motif. Its function was characterized as coordinating the divalent metal ions involved in substrate binding. Furthermore, phylogenetic tree results showed that the TaLIS1 and TuNES1 are highly homologous. Conclusions This assembled transcriptome of S. avenae-damaged Octoploid Trititrigia and intact ears can provide more molecular resources for future functional characterization analysis of genomics in volatile terpenoids involved in direct or indirect defenses. Our study describes the metabolic regulation mechanism of volatile terpenoids in gramineous crops, which provides support for both breeding and genetic modification of wheat varieties resistant to wheat aphids.