PBI: Solanum: A Worldwide Treatment

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Prof. Lynn Bohs of the University of Utah and her colleagues Michael Nee at the New York Botanical Garden, David Spooner of the University of Wisconsin-USDA Vegetable Crops Research Unit, and Sandra Knapp of the Natural History Museum in London and several additional colleagues are creating a comprehensive taxonomic inventory of the large, economically important plant genus Solanum, with an estimated 1500 species worldwide. The genus includes such major crops as tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants and numerous lesser-known crops of tropical and subtropical regions, as well as sources of pharmaceutical agents and also poisonous weeds (like deadly nightshade). Solanum is the focus of several large-scale genomics initiatives and also serves as a model system for the investigation of plant breeding systems, pollination biology, and fruit dispersal. Yet, no comprehensive modern treatment exists for the taxonomy and phylogeny of the genus on a worldwide basis. This project will produce a species-level treatment for the entire group, using existing herbarium and germplasm resources augmented by targeted field collecting with colleagues in South America, Africa, and Madagascar, and organized by a framework of phylogenetic relationships among the species, sections, and subgenera constructed from DNA sequence data integrated with selected morphological characters. The primary goal is creation of a Web-accessible relational database mirrored in the U.S. and the U.K. that supports five modules: new and archival information on species names and supporting vouchers and literature; interactive identification keys with pictorial glossary of plant parts; digital images of plants and habitats and associated pollinators and herbivores where known; specimen database to herbarium vouchers and geo-referenced collections; and molecular sequence and phylogenetic information, linked to GenBank and to resources in the plant genomics field. Because of the worldwide economic importance of Solanum in agriculture, information obtained from this project will benefit society as a whole by enhancing breeding programs for the improvement of cultivated species, adding systematic and phylogenetic value to genomics initiatives, and contributing to the conservation of wild Solanum species including those that may be useful as germplasm resources. Students at all levels, from undergraduate to postdoctoral, will participate in field, herbarium, and laboratory research, along with colleagues on five continents. Outreach to the public will be achieved through presentations by the investigators and colleagues in popular media and through interaction with the Darwin Centre Live program in England, in which scientific presentations are live-streamed to the Internet and archived and available on-line. Co-funding for this ambitious, challenging taxonomic enterprise comes from the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering and from the Plant Genome Research Program.