CROP WILD RELATIVES

Potatoes are grown as a staple food in a number of countries around the world. Potatoes production is fourth at the worldwide level and provides carbohydrates and other nutrients in several developing countries. In South America a large diversity of wild and cultivated potato genotypes have been identified, from which several species have been described in Colombia. The last known collections of wild potato germplasm in Colombia were performed up to 1992, and we know little of wild potato distribution since that time. Several factors may threaten these populations, and we performed field surveys of the Colombian populations, as well as a literature review, studies of herbarium specimens from eight Colombian herbaria and databases from reference collections available on the internet. Based in these data we performed field trips in several Colombian regions where wild and cultivated species were reported previously. We identified Solanum andreanum Baker, S. colombianum Dunal and S. flahaultii Bitter, populations according to the taxonomic concepts of Spooner and Fajardo; or S. andreanum, S. colombianum, S. flahaultii, S. moscopanum Hawkes and S. tuquerrense Hawkes, according to the taxonomy of Hawkes. We observed habitat loss or disturbance that may partially explain the apparent decrease or eventual disappearance of some species at specific sites.