Lorenzo Barchi, Giuseppe Aprea, M Timothy Rabanus-Wallace, Laura Toppino, David Alonso, Ezio Portis, Sergio Lanteri, Luciana Gaccione, Emmanuel Omondi, Maarten van Zonneveld, Roland Schafleitner, Paola Ferrante, Andreas Börner, Nils Stein, Maria José Díez, Veronique Lefebvre, Jérémy Salinier, Hatice Filiz Boyaci, Richard Finkers, Matthijs Brouwer, Arnaud G Bovy, Giuseppe Leonardo Rotino, Jaime Prohens, Giovanni Giuliano
Eggplant (Solanum melongena) is an important Solanaceous crop, widely cultivated and consumed in Asia, the Mediterranean basin, and Southeast Europe. Its domestication centers and migration and diversification routes are still a matter of debate. We report the largest georeferenced and genotyped collection to this date for eggplant and its wild relatives, consisting of 3499 accessions from seven worldwide genebanks, originating from 105 countries in five continents. The combination of genotypic and passport data points to the existence of at least two main centers of domestication, in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, with limited genetic exchange between them...
September 8, 2023: Plant Journal