Pepper and Eggplant Genetic Resources

Peppers (Capsicum spp.) and eggplants (Solanum spp.) are vegetable crops from the Solanaceae family that have spread worldwide and are important as a source of health-related compounds for humans. Several pepper and eggplant species have been domesticated, and a large number of wild relatives exist for both crops. Over 25,000 domesticated and wild accessions are stored in the major germplasm banks, representing the readily available genepool for genetic improvement of the cultivated forms. In the present chapter, we revisit the origin, domestication, and spread of peppers and eggplants, describing the main botanical characteristics, agronomic and qualitative properties, and providing novel insight into the recent classification and phylogenetic relationships. Potentiality and constraints of the use of genetic resources in intraspecific and interspecific hybridization, description of breeding programs carried out in the past years for agronomic traits, improvement of biotic (fungal, bacterial, nematodes, and viruses) and abiotic stresses (heat, drought, and salinity), tolerance, and genetic studies for the identification of genes underlying traits of interest, are widely discussed.