Vegetables Network
| Solanaceae Working Group |
Vegetables Network
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See Article: Report of a Vegetables Network.
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Background information
In May 2000, in Vila Real, Portugal, the ECPGR Vegetables Network Coordinating Group recommended also extending collaborative activities to Solanaceae, Cucurbits and Leafy Vegetables and included these crops within the Network's mandate. A Solanaceae Informal Group was formed to start collaboration on genetic resources of some Solanaceae species, mainly eggplant, tomato and pepper, excluding potato, since this species is included in the ECPGR Sugar, Starch and Fibre Crops Network (at that time called Industrial Crops and Potato Network). Within this context, some ECPGR members attended the second meeting of the EU funded project EGGNET: RESGEN PL 98-113 on "Management, conservation and utilization of genetic resources of eggplants (Solanum species)". This first meeting of the Solanaceae Informal Group, held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in September 2001 brought together most of the European institutions holding important collections of eggplant, tomato, pepper and their wild relatives. A proposal to establish a formal ECPGR Working Group on Solanaceae was prepared in Nijmegen and approved by the ECPGR Steering Committee in November 2001. The Working Group on Solanaceae met in a parallel session with the other Vegetables
Network Working Groups, during the Vegetables Network meeting, held in Skierniewice, Poland, 22-24
May 2003 (see: report [here],
PDF file 850KB). The WG held an ad hoc meeting in Bari, Italy, 17 September 2004, jointly with the
fifth EGGNET project meeting. The Group met again in a parallel session during the Second meeting of the Vegetables Network
in Olomouc, Czech Republic, on 26–28 June 2007.
Working Group objectives
Priorities of the Working Group would be to initiate the following activities:
Documentation
According to the high number of Solanaceae accessions held in Europe (about 5000 accessions for eggplant, 13 000 for pepper and 23 000 for tomato), it was decided that the compilation of the passport data would be done separately for each crop. The EGGNET coordination board had taken the responsibility for compiling the eggplant lists, Turkey those of pepper, Russia those of tomato and Spain those of the other Solanaceae crops (Physalis and Cyphomandra). In order to ensure that the structure of the WG databases is homogeneous at the European level, the updated FAO/IPGRI Multi-Crop Passport Descriptors list (MCPDv2) will be adopted by the WG.
Link with EU project
The work of the Solanaceae Working Group benefited significantly from the work programme of the EGGNET project. At the end of the five-year (1999-2004) project in 2004, the ECPGR Working Group on Solanaceae is expected to continue its activity as an independent Working Group and to facilitate the continuation of collaboration after the project termination. The information on eggplant genetic resources managed by the EGGNET group is available at the EGGNET Web site [here].
Taxonomy
A survey conducted in 2000 revealed that in many European Solanaceae collections, the current taxonomy was not used. It is of high priority for the Group to replace the erroneous species names by those which are officially accepted by the taxonomists, and this objective should be easily completed, if the partners are provided with a proper list of synonyms between species names.
Seed regeneration and storage
Presently, different partners use different protocols. Basic information on seed
management of each partner is available and will be updated regularly
(see: Appendix I of the ad hoc meeting held in Bari,
Italy, September 2004). For more information or comments: |
IPGRI and INIBAP
operate under the name Bioversity International.
