Domesticated Eggplants are Asian

Historical documents and genetic data have shown that the eggplant was first domesticated in Asia, but most of its wild relatives are from Africa.

Researchers from the Natural History Museum of London and the Finnish museum of natural history, University of Helsinki, have sequenced the plastomes of the eggplant and of 22 species directly related to the eggplant.

"Nearly all species of the group of the eggplant inhabit low land savanahs and more or less arid habitats; some species are very widespread across Africa. Our results suggest that there had been a dramatic expansion of the distribution range of the group over the last two million years," says the first author of the paper, Xavier Aubriot.

The researchers found that relatives of the eggplant originated in northeastern Africa some two million years ago. Plants then dispersed both eastwards to tropical Asia and southwards to southern and western Africa. In tropical Asia, the dispersal event gave rise to a species that scientists call Solanum insanum. It is from populations of this wild species that the modern eggplant was later domesticated.

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