determination of genetic diversity between eggplant and its wild ...

Recently with intense interest in tomato and other species of the family, there is
increased accumulation of genetic data (Mueller et al. 2005). Much of the recent data
are expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and can be reached online from a network called
SGN (Mueller et al. 2005). Tomato, potato, pepper, petunia and eggplant all have EST
libraries available with tomato having the most and eggplant the least ESTs (Mueller et
al. 2005). The International Sol Project basically aims to produce data for comparative
studies in the family via first sequencing the whole genome of tomato as a reference
genome (Mueller et al. 2005 and WEB_4 2007). Sequencing of the tomato genome
started in 2004 with collaboration between 10 countries (Mueller et al. 2005). Eggplant
has been largely ignored in these studies end and progress is still behind other species in
the Solanaceae family.
The systematics of flowering plants of which the Solanaceae family is a member
has recently been organized by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG II 2003 and
WEB_1 2007). The idea of the group was to obviate the questions and contradictions
about classification (APG II 2003). The latest phylogenetic classification of
angiosperms (flowering plants) and a detailed classification are shown in Figure 1.12.
and Figure 1.13.
22