Diego Alberto Fajardo

As part of the PBI: Solanum grant I am using morphological and molecular markers to investigate species boundaries and relationships in the wild potato series Conicibaccata. Series Conicibaccata is the second largest series (after series Tuberosa) in wild potatoes, containing about 40 species. Many of these species are very similar and may not represent good species. Series Conicibaccata currently is defined by conical fruits and leaves with generally parallel sided morphology, but the boundaries of the series are not entirely clear and I am exploring the monophyly of the group. The series includes both diploids and polyploids. Chloroplast DNA restriction site data (Castillo and Spooner, 1997) suggests that the diploids and polyploids form two separate clades. Some prior hypotheses suggest that the polyploids are allopolyploids. The morphological data will be obtained from a replicated field trial of germplasm accessions from the US Potato Genebank and The International Potato Center in a field station in Huancayo Peru, and compared to prior morphological data from Castillo, and to new molecular data. I am exploring both intron-rich DNA sequences from single-copy genes for this purpose as well as marker data from AFLPs.