Solanaceae IX: Systematics, genomics, and evolution

Abstract

The nightshades (Solanaceae) are one of the most economically important plant families used as food crops, horticultural resources as well as medicines. The family is globally distributed and currently includes 106 genera and c. 2700 species. More about the family is discovered every day, with much ongoing research taking place across the globe. In the past 2.5 years alone, 3 new genera and 80 new species have been described in Solanaceae (e.g., Orejuela & al., 2022; Dillon, 2023; Wang & al., 2024), several genomes, pangenomes and even a super-pangenome have been published (e.g., Tang & al., 2022; Bozan & al., 2023; Li & al., 2023; Lin & al., 2023; Wu & al., 2023a), and new morphological features have been discovered such as tuberous roots in tribe Physalideae (Wang & al., 2024) and resin glands in Solanum (da Silva-Sampaio & al., 2021)...