Eggplant Breeding

[William Schlegel]

My wife has been doing doing a lot of seed trading for flower seeds.

She had shown me a list of vegetables someone offered awhile ago and amongst them was Ping Tung eggplant. I remembered the variety from a long ago wish to grow it.

So I'll be growing an egg plant I guess. Only time I've grown one was when I worked in a local greenhouse in 2016. Annoying things that like it hot and like to be dried down between waterings as I recall. Hopefully I can hold off awhile to start them or maybe I should direct seed them.

Would like some more genetics though.

Not really a very familiar plant for me never really grown them or eaten them.

[Garrett Schantz]

Chi Yei is pretty early.

Eggplants are grown all over Asia and other countries. They self pollinate, but their female organ is exposed.

There are differences in flower size and color. Purple flowers, white flowers etc.

Bakercreek has a nice selection of eggplants.

Solanm aethiopicum is also called an eggplant, some other species are as well.

I would be sure to check the species name is Solanum melongena if you are looking for breeding material.

[William Schlegel]

I think I'll do it long term from seed trades only- assuming I can grow it seed to seed. Looks like the local seed coop has sold seed of Ping Tung Long and Early Black, good indication I might be able to grow it seed to seed, though perhaps not without season extension. OSSI has no eggplants.

[Woody Gardener]

I've been trying to grow eggplants in my 'tough-love' garden (poor, heavy soil; no chemicals; only dilute urine for fertilizer; limited watering during heat and drought) for 15 years. After many years of failure I've taken to saying "no more" but each year I find one or more that I decide to try. This year I'm going to try Chinese String Eggplant:
https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/new-items-2021/chinese-string-eggplant
Baker Creek does have an incredible collection and says "Eggplant is easy to grow(my emphasis), and the fruit is nutritious and incredibly delicious. We offer the best selection of quality heirloom eggplants in the USA. Fruit comes in a rainbow of fun colors!" Of course that's for gardeners who take better care of their plants than I do.

[Garrett Schantz]

Flea beetles tend to destroy any eggplants that I try growing. They also tend to attack any corn that I plant.

Possibly due to the fact that there are acres of corn fields around me that get sprayed. Which means, the flea beetles are attracted to the area, but can't infest those plants very well.

Trying a supposedly flea beetle resistant variety this time around, along with a few other varieties.

Physalis species are also bothered a bit by the flea beetles, but they don't mess with them very much.

If all goes well, I may send seed out as well. This could include possible hybrids since I will be trying multiple varieties.

[Adrian]

In france this summer was extremly rainy.The eggplants was grow very late this year. I put eggplants in front a wall and it was more efficient.The soil was clay,
I think it a good idea to developped a tolerancy at humid soil and rain.The big problem when the soil is too humid is the nitrogen defisciency.

[Garrett Schantz]

Going to list the Eggplants that I am growing this year:

Japanese White Egg Eggplant - White fruit / flowers.

Chinese String Eggplant - Nice looking flowers - shown on Bakercreek's site.

Chi Yei - Supposedly resistant to flea beetles.

Burpee's Black Beauty - Bought at a retail store.



Also growing

Melanzana Rossa di Rotonda Eggplant - Solanum aethiopicum

Upper Volta Garden Egg - Solanum aethiopicum

Bakercreek mentions that Jere Gettle got his seed in Italy for Melanzana Rossa di Rotonda in 2009 - originally from Ethiopia, supposedly tastes of eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. Experimental Farm Network's type is from Ghana - this one is described as a "rare non-bitter accession".

Both are best eaten green, as the bitterness increases with maturity.

Gboma or Gbogname Eggplant - Solanum macrocarpon

Kitiley (African Pea Eggplant) - Solanum anguivi


The Experimental Farm Network recommends boiling / eating the leaves of Solanum macrocarpon as is done in Africa. But, eating anything other than the fruit is associated with heart failure - the whole plant is bitter, mostly using these to attempt hybrids and remove bitterness, hopefully make these safer to eat.


Apparently Solanum macrocarpon and Solanum melongena could both be from Africa - S. macrocarpon is more or less confirmed to be from West Africa.

Both crops made their way to Asia a long time ago, so it is unknown where they are native to precisely.

Hybrids have been made with them.

https://www.iihr.res.in/restoration-fertility-interspecific-f1-hybrid-between-solanum-melongena-and-solanum-macrocarpon

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Interspecific-hybridization-between-Solanum-and-of-Gowda-Shivashankar/7387a108e4f31ccedf35e0ce1945b0b658ae57b0

The hybrids were found to be sterile, the investigations revealed that the failure of seed set in hybrids is due to the ovule abortion. In order to overcome the sterility, the colchicine has been applied to the interspecific hybrids.

F2s are mentioned on one of these links as well. Sweet eggplants exist, these may work out nicely for eliminating toxicity - although eggplants themselves shouldn't be eaten in large amounts either.


https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2014.00318/full

S. anguivi and S. dasyphyllum are noted as S. aethiopicum and S. macrocarpon's wild ancestors respectively.

S. aethiopicum is mentioned as being a hypervariable species, which is great for a crop. But, I don't care for bitter foods. Probably won't be able to request any interesting genomes unless I actually carry out successful hybridizations.

S. macrocarpon is also mentioned as being highly variable as well.

S. melongena is also variable, but these related species have a lot of resistances not present in the common Eggplant.

Hybrid descendants seem to be in supermarkets already, but there are other fun traits to work with in these species.


Any sort of interspecific hybrids might go elsewhere, dunno.


Eggplant breeding does sound fun to me.

[Nicolas]

Jaime Prohens - Introgression breeding in eggplant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANlAXrpTYes

[Mikkel ImGrimm]

S. aethiopicum is mentioned as being a hypervariable species, which is great for a crop. But, I don't care for bitter foods. Probably won't be able to request any interesting genomes unless I actually carry out successful hybridizations.

Can you report on that? How have you developed?
The bitterness is indeed a major drawback, but aethiopicum is very well adapted to the northern German climate, eggplant with this vigor would be a real advance.

[Garrett Schantz]

Can you report on that? How have you developed?
The bitterness is indeed a major drawback, but aethiopicum is very well adapted to the northern German climate, eggplant with this vigor would be a real advance.

I haven't grown any of the species here other than the common eggplant yet.

Both of the S. aethiopicum varieties that I have acquired have a low bitterness, apparently.

Upper Volta Garden Egg, supposedly has no bitterness. The variety is also no longer being sold by the Experimental Farm Network - or being resold by anyone else. Makes it a priority grow out to me.

Melanzana Rossa di Rotonda Eggplant probably has some nice adaptations to Northern Climates.


Most hybrids with these Eggplant relatives, simply take out resistant genes and then default back to the common Eggplant. Same thing happens in Tomato relative breeding.

I want to perhaps develop orange-sweet eggplants. Or purple eggplants that are orange inside.

S. melongena has a rather poor fruit set compared to some of these relatives. Per plant, you may get 6 - 8 decent sized fruits.

Different flower types could be played around with as well.


Really wanting an eggplant that can grow better in all or most of North America - Europe.

[Greenie DeS]

I'm trying Nord eggplant this year, via Annapolis seed. It's supposed to be very short season. I've only ever had eggplant ripen in the warmest of my greenhouses but Annapolis seeds have tended to be good to me so we'll see.

In previous years Applegreen was recommended as being good in cool climates, but it wasn't good enough to give me anything. Patio baby produced a couple fruits in a greenhouse. I've tried a handful of little ones but all pretty standard small blacks.

[Garrett Schantz]

Jaime Prohens - Introgression breeding in eggplant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANlAXrpTYes

Good video, seems like they also used some toxic species in their breeding.

Solanum torvum required embryo rescue to cross with Eggplant, seems to have only worked with one accession - but the offspring did not produce fruit. Litchi tomatoes were also mentioned here.

In a lot of cases, the crosses didn't work out between certain S. melongena accessions with wild relatives. Which is one of the reasons that I tried getting varieties with different flowers size / shape / colors.


One of the great things mentioned here, is that S. anguivi and S. dasyphyllum crosses were obtained just by removing the male parts of flowers and pollinating them with the desired pollen. Of course, the crosses didn't always take - but this means I won't need much of any embryo rescue.


Using the American relatives, they managed backcrosses using the interspecific hybrids as the mother.

Dwarf selections came about, again similar with tomato wild relatives breeding.

Crosses seemed to work better in different climates.

Some of the S. melongena accessions may work better than others with different specific relatives. Then they could be worked back into each other.

I may try Solanum viride hybrids as well. Has an interesting flavor profile from what I have been reading.

https://jpp.journals.ekb.eg/article_164624_3220a6d04332dc5d050f8d07cd1a2cd6.pdf

Anything out of the mentioned species in the video and here may go elsewhere. Would probably start to diverge from the "Eggplant" field of things.

[Nicolas]

Tim Peters mentioning working on cross breeding eggplant with a cold hardy perennial wild relative.

After finding perennials some years back I began some crossbreeding efforts. The wild perennials have nasty bitter little fruit and are generally quite spiny, but they regen from root tissue readily after winter lows of -5 F to -10F and have huge levels of disease and insect tolerance.

https://alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/2853/eggplants-breeding-perennials

[AndrewB]

My wife has been doing doing a lot of seed trading for flower seeds.

She had shown me a list of vegetables someone offered awhile ago and amongst them was Ping Tung eggplant. I remembered the variety from a long ago wish to grow it.

So I'll be growing an egg plant I guess. Only time I've grown one was when I worked in a local greenhouse in 2016. Annoying things that like it hot and like to be dried down between waterings as I recall. Hopefully I can hold off awhile to start them or maybe I should direct seed them.

Would like some more genetics though.

Not really a very familiar plant for me never really grown them or eaten them.

https://wildmountainseeds.com/product/ping-tong-shaped-grex/

Ping Tong selected for Colorado mountain climate.



Was also browsing seed catalogs yesterday and noticed two varieties of ornamental pumpkin shaped orange eggplants. One said it had thorns and the other said it was spineless or thornless. An orange edible eggplant might be cool. Can't find which catalog it was in, but found this:

https://blogs.cornell.edu/hightunnels/flowers/cut-flowers/cut-flower-crops/pumpkin-on-a-stick/

Solanum aethiopicum - We have tested only two varieties so far: a spiny, earlier variety with relatively thin, dark-red stems and orange fruits, and a sturdier, later spineless variety with green stems and darker red fruits.

edible orange varieties:

Turkish Orange
MELANZANA ROSSA DI ROTONDA EGGPLANT

[William Schlegel]

Eggplants were a bust for me in 2022. Eaten to nothing by Colorado Potato Beetles. Definitely a good garden to test arthropod resistant tomatoes in for 2023.