Toric manifolds with degenerate dual variety and defect polytopes

We classify projective toric manifolds whose dual variety is not a hypersurface in the dual projective space. Under the standard dictionary between toric geometry and convex geometry, they correspond to certain convex Delzant integer polytopes, P, which we call defect polytopes. Using the geometrical classification we give a detailed description of defect polytopes and prove that they are characterized by the vanishing of a combinatorial invariant, denoted by c(P). We further prove that a related invariant, c*(P), is nonnegative, for any simple convex integral polytope.