Wild Potato Solanum Section Petota Solanaceae Of North And Central America

Taxonomic monograph; sections on taxonimic history, exploration for potatoes, morphology, breeding systems, hybridization, relationships, distribution, uses, taxonomy (keys, full synonymies and descriptions), bibliography.

Solanum section Petota., which includes the cultivated potato (S. tuberosum) and its wild relatives, is distributed from the southwestern United States to central Argentina, Uruguay, and adjacent Chile. This taxonomic treatment includes all wild species of section Petota from northern South America, which includes Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. It is the last of five taxonomic treatments of a monophyletic potato + tomato + section Etuberosum clade, including treatments of 1) wild potatoes from North and Central America, 2) wild potatoes from southern South America, and the close outgroup section Etuberosum, 3) cultivated potatoes, and 4) wild tomatoes. Wild species of section Petota include diploids (2n = 24), triploids (2n = 36), tetraploids (2n = 48), and hexaploids (2n = 72), with all of these levels represented in northern South America. We here recognize 60 species from section Petota in this region and partition them into five species groups, recognizing only about half of the species from northern South America relative to the most recent taxonomic treatments by J.G. Hawkes and C.M. Ochoa. We summarize recent morphological and molecular studies of species limits and their interrelationships, and provide a key to the species, descriptions, synonymies (including designations of lectotypes), illustrations, localities, disease resistances, and distribution maps for all species.

This book gathers the latest information on the organization of genomes in wild Solanum species and emphasizes how this information is yielding direct outcomes in the fields of molecular breeding, as well as a better understanding of both the patterns and processes of evolution. Cultivated Solanums, such as potato, tomato, and pepper, possess a high number of wild relatives that are of great importance for practical breeding and evolutionary studies. Their germplasm is often characterized by allelic diversity, as well as genes that are lacking in the cultivated species. Wild Solanums have not been fully exploited by breeders. This is mainly due to the lack of information regarding their genetics and genomics. However, the genome of important cultivated Solanaceae such as potato, tomato, eggplant, and pepper has already been sequenced. On the heels of these recent developments, wild Solanum genomes are now becoming available, opening an exciting new era for both basic research and varietal development in the Solanaceae.