Viral diseases associated to wild potatoes (Solanum L. section Petota Dumort) and its conservation in Bolivia

Different species of wild potatoes are distributed in highlands and inter-Andean valleys of Bolivia. In recent years, potato virus’s incidence has been reported in native and modern varieties of Andean areas of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, which could also affect wild potatoes. The main of the present investigation was to identify potato viruses using DAS ELISA in wild potatoes species, from isolated collection places and intensive potato cultivation places in the Bolivian Andean region. Folioles samples from different wild potato species were collected considering isolated distribution areas and potato cultivation intensity areas. The samples were analysed using DAS ELISA for PRX, PVY, PLRV, APLV and APMoV viruses. The results show that in the high Andean zones and inter-Andean valleys some species are contaminated with PVX, PVY and PLRV viruses and not with APLV and APMoV. In the high Andean areas with intensive potato cultivation S. acaule is contaminated with PVX and S. megistacrolobum with PVY and PLRV; however, in the inter-Andean valley areas with intensive potato cultivation, S. brevicaule is contaminated with PVY and S. berthaultii with PVY and PLRV. In isolated or remote areas S. capsicibaccatum, S. microdontum and Solanum spp. they are not contaminated with any analysed viruses.

World History of the Potato

Potatoes were first domesticated, along with the sweet potato and other Andean crops, perhaps as early as 7000 BP, although native South Americans had been eating wild potatoes for at least four thousand years before that. The cause of domestication is imperfectly understood, but it was probably some sort of environmental adaptation and not simply the result of invention. After the Spanish conquest, it took centuries (from the early 1500s to the 1800s) for Europeans to fully adopt the potato. The Irish Potato Famine (1845 to 1859) was caused by careless government, as much as by late blight. The French fry was invented in Belgium or Holland before 1680, and the frozen, pre-fabricated, fry was created in the late 1940s.

Poszukiwanie samorzutnych mutantów woskowych wśród ziaren pyłku u kilku gatunków i linii 24-chromosomowych ziemniaków [The searching for the spontaneous waxy mutation in pollen grains of some diploid forms of wild potatoes]

Only in one of 12 investigated species i.e. in <i>Solanum chacoense (gibberulosum)</i> which became pollen staining red when treated with I+KI was been found. However in three forms:<i> Solanum verrucosum</i>, 133 <i>Solanum chacoense (Schickii)</i> and 127 <i>Solanum chacoense (gibberulosum)</i> the dimorphism of starch grains within the anther wall has been observed. It can be assumed that in these forms starch with a prevailing amount of amylopectin will be formed.