Solanum melongena L. (Eggplant )

Crop Type: Garden Crop

Breeding system: Predominantly autogamous

The common eggplant (Solanum melongena L.; Solanaceae) was domesticated in Southeast Asia (Page et al., 2019) and is the sixth horticultural crop, and the second solanaceous one after tomato, in production worldwide (FAOSTAT, 2017). In the last fifty years the total production of eggplant has increased dramatically (8.7-fold), although the greatest increases have been experienced in the last decade. Common eggplant is widespread and consumed worldwide, although most of the production takes place in tropical and subtropical areas. In Africa, two other eggplant species, the scarlet (S. aethiopicum L.) and gboma (S. macrocarpon L.) eggplants are locally important (Plazas et al., 2014). Eggplant is one of the vegteables with highest antioxidant activity, thanks to its high content in phenolic acids, particularly chlorogenic acid (Plazas et al., 2013).

Eggplant is mostly autogamous, although a certain degree of cross-pollination may take place in the presence of pollinators (Pessarakli and Dris, 2004). Morphologically, eggplant is a highly variable species (Cericola et al., 2013), although the genetic diversity of the crop is reduced compared to wild species (Acquadro et al., 2017), and also in modern cultivars in comparison to landraces (Muñoz-Falcón et al., 2009a). Eggplant was domesticated from S. insanum in southeast Asia (Page et al., 2019), but is also related to many other wild relatives, with many of which it is possible to obtain hybrids as well as backcross generations and introgression lines (Kouassi et al., 2016; Plazas et al., 2016; Gramazio et al., 2017). Over 6,000 accessions of eggplant are conserved in germplasm banks worldwide, with the largest collection being at World Vegetable Center in Taiwan (Taher et al., 2017).

References

• Acquadro A, Barchi L, Gramazio P, Portis E, Vilanova S, Comino C, Plazas M, Prohens J, Lanteri S (2017) Coding SNPs analysis highlights genetic relationships and evolution pattern in eggplant complexes. PLOS ONE 12:e0180774. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0180774
• Cericola F, Portis E, Toppino L, Barchi L, Acciarri N, Ciriaci T, Sala T, Rotino GL, Lanteri S (2013) The population structure and diversity of eggplant from Asia and the Mediterranean basin. PLOS ONE 8:e73702. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073702
• FAOSTAT. 2017. http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home (11-5-2019)
• Gramazio P, Prohens J, Plazas M, Mangino G, Herraiz FJ, Vilanova S (2017) Development and characterization of advanced backcross materials and an introgresion line population of Solanum incanum in a S. melongena background. Front Plant Sci 8:1477. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2017.01477
• Kouassi B, Prohens J, Gramazio P, Kouassi AB, Vilanova S, Galán-Ávila A, Herraiz FJ, Kouassi A, Seguí-Simarro JM, Plazas M (2016) Development of backcross generations and new interspecific hybrid combinations for introgression breeding in eggplant (Solanum melongena). Sci Hort 213:199-207. doi: 10.1016/j.scienta.2016.10.039
• Muñoz-Falcón JE, Prohens J, Vilanova S, Nuez F (2009a) Diversity in commercial varieties and landraces of black eggplants and implications for broadening the breeders’ gene pool. Ann Appl Biol 154:453-465 doi: 10.1111/j.1744-7348.2009.00314.x
• Page A, Gibson J, Meyer R, Chapman MA (2019) Eggplant domestication: Pervasive gene flow, feralization, and transcriptomic divergence. Mol Biol Evol in press. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msz062
• Pessarakli MM, Dris R (2004) Pollination and breeding of eggplants. Food Agric Environ 2:218-219
• Plazas M, Andújar I, Vilanova S, Hurtado M, Gramazio P, Herraiz FJ, Prohens J (2013) Breeding for chlorogenic acid content in eggplant: interest and prospects. Not Bot Horti Agrobot 41:26-35. doi: 10.15835/nbha4119036
• Plazas M, Andújar I, Vilanova S, Gramazio P, Herraiz FJ, Prohens J (2014) Conventional and phenomics characterization provides insight into the diversity and relationships of hypervariable scarlet (Solanum aethiopicum L.) and gboma (S. macrocarpon L.) eggplants. Front Plant Sci 5:318. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2014.00318
• Plazas M, Vilanova S, Gramazio P, Rodríguez-Burruezo A, Fita A, Herraiz FJ, Ranil R, Fonseka R, Niran L, Fonseka H, Kouassi B, Kouassi A, Kouassi A, Prohens J (2016) Interspecific hybridization between eggplant and wild relatives from different genepools. J Am Soc Hort Sci. doi: 10.21273/JASHS.141.1.34
• Prohens J, Muñoz-Falcón JE, Rodríguez-Burruezo A, Ribas F, Castro Á, Nuez F (2009) ‘H15’, an Almagro-type pickling eggplant with high yield and reduced prickliness. HortScience 44:2017-2019 doi: 10.21273/HORTSCI.44.7.2017
• Taher D, Solberg SØ, Prohens J, Chou Y, Rakha M, Wu T (2017) World Vegetable center eggplant collection: Origin, composition, seed dissemination and utilization in breeding. Front Plant Sci 5:318. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2017.01484

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