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Journal of Integrative Agriculture  2025, Vol. 24 Issue (6): 2203-2216    DOI: 10.1016/j.jia.2024.03.014
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Introgressed eggplant lines with the wild Solanum incanum evaluated under drought stress conditions

Martín Flores-Saavedra1, Pietro Gramazio1, Santiago Vilanova1, Diana M.  Mircea1, 2, Mario X.  Ruiz-González1, Óscar Vicente1, Jaime Prohens1, Mariola Plazas1#

1 Institute for Conservation and Improvement of Valencian Agrodiversity, Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Valencia 46022, Spain

2 Department of Forestry, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca 400372, Romania

 Highlights 
Introgression of Solanum incanum genomic regions improves drought tolerance in eggplant.
Solanum incanum introgressions on chromosomes 1, 2, 6, 8, and 12 increase water use efficiency (WUE), leaf hydration, root and stem biomass, and chlorophyll content under water stress conditions.
A total of 37 genomic regions show significant effects on traits under water stress conditions.
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Abstract  

As access to irrigation water becomes increasingly limited, introgression of relevant genomic regions from drought-tolerant wild genotypes is a promising breeding strategy for crop plants.  In this study, nine eggplant (Solanum melongena) introgression lines (ILs) covering altogether 71.6% of the genome of the donor wild relative parent S. incanum were evaluated for drought tolerance under water stress conditions.  Plants at the five true leaves stage were irrigated at either 100% (control) or 30% (water stress) field capacity for 14 days, and growth and biochemical traits were measured.  Reduced irrigation resulted in decreased growth and increased stress markers such as proline and malondialdehyde.  Most ILs had lower growth and biomass production than the cultivated parent under both conditions.  However, the wild alleles for two genomic regions related to stem and root dry weight conferred improved tolerance to water stress.  In addition, several S. incanum alleles had a positive effect on important traits that may improve yield under drought conditions, such as leaf water content water use efficiency, and chlorophyll content.  Fine-mapping the genomic regions for tolerance and reducing linkage drag with regions affecting growth will be crucial for significantly improving eggplant drought tolerance through introgression breeding.


Keywords:  Solanum melongena       S. incanum       introgression lines       water stress       oxidative stress       genomic regions  
Received: 05 May 2023   Online: 05 March 2024   Accepted: 08 January 2024
Fund: 
This work was supported by the grants CIPROM/2021/020 from Conselleria d’Educació, Universitats i Ocupació (Generalitat Valenciana, Spain) and PID2021-128148OB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by “ERDF A way of making Europ”, as well as by the initiative “Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives”, which is supported by the Government of Norway.  This latter project is managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust with the Millennium Seed Bank of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and implemented in partnership with national and international gene banks and plant breeding institutes around the world.  For further information, see the project website: http://www.cwrdiversity.org/.  Martín Flores-Saavedra is grateful to Conselleria d’Educació, Universitats i Ocupació de la Generalitat Valenciana for a pre-doctoral grant within the Santiago Grisolía programme (GRISOLIAP/2021/151).  Pietro Gramazio is grateful to Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación for a post-doctoral grant (RYC2021-031999-I) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union through NextGenerationEU/PRTR.

About author:  #Correspondence Mariola Plazas, E-mail: maplaav@btc.upv.es

Cite this article: 

Martín Flores-Saavedra, Pietro Gramazio, Santiago Vilanova, Diana M. Mircea, Mario X. Ruiz-González, Óscar Vicente, Jaime Prohens, Mariola Plazas. 2025. Introgressed eggplant lines with the wild Solanum incanum evaluated under drought stress conditions. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 24(6): 2203-2216.

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