wrote:


There's no evidence that the potato is older as a species than the
tomato. The genus Solanum, into which tomatoes have recently been
returned from Lycopersicum, includes potatoes, eggplants and literally
hundreds of other species. Indeed, it's the most speciose
genus in the plant kingdom, and is in dire need of reorganization.
AFAIK, nobody has taken up this daunting task. A good, consistent
phylogenetic tree of Solanum sensu lato would be a way cool thing to
have, and would be really useful in sorting it out.

There's no reason to think that either the potato or tomato is ancestral
to the other. Doubtless they have a common ancestor, as do the hundreds
of other species in the genus, many of which are more closely related
to one than the other, while others (notably the Africa species) are
collectively less related to both. Species generally known as potatoes
and tomatoes probably originated in the Andes mountains, since that's
where you find the largest number of closely related species.

So what is really needed is a complete genome on potato and tomato and
that would give evidence
as to many of these guesses and hunches.

Well, there has been quite a lot of genomic work done on these important
crops, and enough of it is online that you could learn quite a bit if
you actually wished to. I recall one paper online that compared potato,
tomato and eggplant genomes with peppers (Capsicum) as the outgroup.

Btw, if any of the botanists here would care to comment on what (if
anything) has been happening to reorganize Solanum, I'd appreciate if
they'd contribute, maybe under a different Subject: heading.

I don't normally reply to Mr. Plutonium's posts, but perhaps the
discussion can be turned to something more relevant here.

I was under the impression that tomatoes were not indigenous or native
to South America, but were native to Asia or Africa. So if that is
false, then
my hunch is false.

If the two are native to South America, then, of course, it is easy to
see that
they evolved via mutations in creating the new species within South
America.
I think the nightshade weed is of the same genus Solanum. So that
perhaps
it is not a case of potato to tomato via mutations but rather that
weeds of
solanum mutated, since they are more adaptable and prolific and the
mutation
rate increased so that the potato came from weed mutation and tomato
came
from other weed mutation.

Now is the Solanum genus native and indigenous to South America also?
And was the Solanum genus spread to other continents?

What is the most prolific Solanum weed? Is it nightshade?

So a genome of potato and tomato and the most prolific weed of Solanum
may
find the genes which mutated in the
long ago past history.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies