The major cultivated potato, Solanum tuberosum, and six other related cultivated species, are hypothesized to have arisen from a group of weedy relatives indigenous to the central Andes of central Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina. A major problem hindering investigations of the origins of the cultivated species has been a continuing debate over the species boundaries of their putative prog...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Double B-box zinc finger (DBB) proteins are recently identified plant transcription regulators that participate in the response to sodium chloride-induced stress in arabidopsis plants. Little is known regarding their subcellular localization and expression patterns, particularly in relation to other osmotic constraints and the day/night cycle. This study investigated natural...

Solanum L. (Solanaceae) is distributed mainly throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world and is the largest and most complex genus of the family Solanaceae. In Brazil, Solanum is represented by about 350 species. In this region, many species of Solanum are widely used in popular medicine and are commonly known as ‘yubeba’, the word derived from Tupi Guarani that refers to the ...

The antioxygenic activity of Solanum nigrum L. leaves and its various solvent extracts were evaluated using sunflower oil model system. Leaf powder and its methanol/water (80:20) soluble fraction showed strong antioxygenic activity in refined sunflower oil. On the other hand, ethyl acetate fraction exhibited marginal antioxygenic activity, whereas the water soluble fraction was practically devo...

Malnutrition is one of the world's largest health concerns. Folate (also known as vitamin B₉) is essential in the human diet, and without adequate folate intake, several serious health concerns, such as congenital birth defects and an increased risk of stroke and heart disease, can occur. Most people's folate intake remains sub-optimal, even in countries that have a folic acid food fortificatio...

Solanum section Lasiocarpa includes about a dozen species with a center of diversity in theNewWorld tropics. Solanum lasiocarpum and S. repandum (sometimes considered to be conspeciŽc as S. ferox) have an Old World distribution in Asia and the PaciŽc Islands. Several species in this section produce edible fruits, and two, the lulo or naranjilla (S. quitoense) and the cocona (S. sessiliorum) ar...

Agroinfiltration and PVX agroinfection are two efficient transient expression assays for functional analysis of candidate genes in plants. The most commonly used agent for agroinfiltration is Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a pathogen of many dicot plant species. This implies that agroinfiltration can be applied to many plant species. Here, we present our protocols and expected results when applying...

Tests of eight Dutch Meloidogyne chitwoodi isolates to the differential set for host races 1 and 2 in M. chitwoodi provided no evidence for the existence of host race 2 in the Netherlands. The data showed deviations from expected reactions on the differential hosts, which raised doubts of the usefulness of the host race classification in M. chitwoodi. The term ''pathotype'' is proposed for grou...

Type III effectors from phytopathogenic bacteria exhibit a high degree of functional redundancy, hampering the evaluation of their precise contribution to pathogenicity. This is illustrated by the GALA type III effectors from Ralstonia solanacearum, which have been shown to be collectively, but not individually, required for disease on Arabidopsis thaliana and tomato. We investigated evolution,...