Solanum melongena, L.

Meyer, Rachel S., Whitaker, Bruce D., Little, Damon P., Wu, Shi-Biao, Kennelly, Edward J., Long, Chun-Lin & Litt, Amy, 2015, Parallel reductions in phenolic constituents resulting from the domestication of eggplant, Phytochemistry 115 (1), pp. 194-206 : 200

2.7. Correlation of compound abundance with site-origin of eggplant landraces

Artificial selection for local preferences of fruit qualities such as flavor, as well as adaptation to local agricultural conditions and ecologies, may contribute to eggplant phenolic diversity just as genetic history does. To test this potential influence from landscape, another ANOVA was performed using groups based on floristic region, as defined by Takhtajan (1986), of collection locales (site-origin) of S. melongena . Similar to previous tests, in this ANOVA abundance levels of all 21 compounds present in the 62 S. melongena samples were evaluated in addition to the total abundance levels. Since 95% of all samples were from four floristic regions that together span the range of all three possible domestication events, only those four regions were analyzed: the Eastern Asiatic floristic region (n = 17); the Indian region (n = 12); the Indochinese region (n = 15), and the Malesian region (n = 15). Only 3,5-di- O -[E]-feruloylquinic acid (27) was significantly different in abundance among groups. This compound, found only in four eggplants of Indonesian origin, is also minor (Table S1), and was not consistently produced in any species. Therefore, site-origin appears to have no clear relationship to the metabolite complements of these landraces.