''Solanum bulbocastanum'', the ornamental nightshade, is a plant in the family

Solanaceae The Solanaceae , or nightshades, are a family of flowering plants that ranges from annual and perennial herbs to vines, lianas, epiphytes, shrubs, and trees, and includes a number of agricultural crops, medicinal plants, spices, weeds, and or ...

, native to

Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...

and parts of the

U.S. Southwest The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, N ...

. It is closely related to the

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Uni ...

and, as it has evolved strong resistance to all known varieties of

potato blight ''Phytophthora infestans'' is an oomycete or water mold, a fungus-like microorganism that causes the serious potato and tomato disease known as late blight or potato blight. Early blight, caused by ''Alternaria solani'', is also often called "po ...

, has been used to

genetically engineer Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including ...

resistance into the cultivated varieties of potatoes around the world. The use of genetic engineering is helpful, as efforts to hybridize by traditional methods have so far been unsuccessful, and the use of somatic hybridization to transfer genes is difficult. A resistance to the Columbia root-knot nematode

Meloidogyne chitwoodi ''Meloidogyne chitwoodi'' is a plant pathogenic root-knot nematode that is a crop pest of potatoes, carrots, and black salsify. Root-knot nematodes such as ''M. chitwoodi'' cause the production of root-knot galls when their larvae infect the pl ...

has been identified in S. bulbocastanum, which can be transferred to cultivated potato.

References

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External links

''Solanum bulbocastanum'' Dunal on Solanaceae Source
— Images, description, specimens and a full list of scientific synonyms. bulbocastanum {{Solanales-stub