Giuseppe Leonardo Rotino

• MS
• Research Director at Council for Agricultural Research and Agricultural Economy Analysis

Eggplant ( Solanum melongena ) is one of the four most important Solanaceous crops, widely cultivated and consumed in Asia, the Mediterranean basin, and Southeast Europe. We studied the Genome-wide association (GWA) of historical genebank phenotypic data on a genotyped worldwide collection of 3,449 eggplant accessions. Overall, 334 significant asso...

Climate change often results in extreme weather events as raises in temperatures, scarce and erratic precipitations, expansion of lands that suffer from floods or water deficit. These extreme weather events directly affect plant growth and crop yields. Eggplant, whose popularity raised in recent years, is widely produced and consumed in Asia, Middl...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena) is an important Solanaceous crop, widely cultivated and consumed in Asia, the Mediterranean basin, and Southeast Europe. Its domestication centers and migration and diversification routes are still a matter of debate. We report the largest georeferenced and genotyped collection to this date for eggplant and its wild rel...

Globe artichoke capitula are susceptible to browning due to oxidation of phenols caused by the activity of polyphenol oxidases (PPOs), this reduces their suitability for fresh or processed uses. A genome-wide analysis of the globe artichoke PPO gene family was performed. Bioinformatics analyses identified eleven PPOs and their genomic and amino aci...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena) is a major vegetable crop with great potential for genetic improvement owing to its large and mostly untapped genetic diversity. Eggplant is closely related to over 500 species of Solanum subgenus Leptostemonum, belonging to its primary, secondary, and tertiary genepools, and exhibits a wide range of characteristics, in...

The Asparagus genus includes approximately 240 species, the most important of which is garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.), as this is a vegetable crop cultivated worldwide for its edible spear. Along with garden asparagus, other species are also cultivated (e.g., Asparagus maritimus L.) or have been proposed as untapped sources of variabil...

Eggplant (S. melongena L.) belongs to Solanaceae and is cultivated worldwide. Root-knot nematodes (RKN), Meloidogyne spp., are among the most important pathogens affecting eggplant production both in greenhouse and open field cultivation. Chemical control was carried out for many years, but their excessive usage is harmful for both human and enviro...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.), a wide-spread and commonly consumed vegetable, is susceptible to fungal infection caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. melongenae (Fom), that can persist in the soil for many years, resulting into plant wilting and significant yield loss. It is known that the specific N-form can either prevent or delay the plant symp...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) is a worldwide cultivated vegetable crop from the Solanaceae family whose berries are an important component of human’s daily diet and are rich in health-related compounds. As it happens with many domesticates, this species is sensitive to many abiotic stresses including drought, extreme temperatures, salinity, and s...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.), similar to many other crops, suffers from soil-borne diseases, including Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. melongenae (Fom), causing wilting and heavy yield loss. To date, the genetic factors underlying plant responses to Fom are not well known. We previously developed a Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs) population using as a...

The grafting of vegetable crops is considered a valuable mean for ensuring the yield and quality under different cultivation conditions. Simultaneously, there are increasing research efforts in exploiting underutilised plants as potential rootstocks for vegetables to increase the sustainability of horticultural systems. In accordance with the Europ...

Nitrogen (N) fertilization is one of the main inputs to increase crop yield and food production. However, crops utilize only 30–40% of N applied; the remainder is leached into the soil, causing environmental and health damage. In this scenario, the improvement of nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) will be an essential strategy for sustainable agricultur...

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...

Eggplant berries are rich in anthocyanins like delphinidin-3-rutinoside (D3R) and nasunin (NAS), which are accumulated at high amounts in the peel. NAS is derived by D3R through acylation and glycosylation steps. The presence of D3R or NAS is usually associated with black-purple or lilac fruit coloration of the most cultivated varieties, respective...

Eggplant fruits are normally harvested and marketed when they reach the commercial maturity, that precedes the physiological ripening when dramatic changes in taste, composition and peel color take place. The biochemical changes in fruit peel across the developmental stages, characterized also by a sizeable decrement of anthocyanins, were studied i...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) represents the third most important crop of the Solanaceae family and is an important component of our daily diet. A population of 164 F6 recombinant inbred lines (RILs), derived from two eggplant lines differing with respect to several key agronomic traits, “305E40” and “67/3,” was grown to the commercial maturation...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) is an important horticultural crop and one of the most widely grown vegetables from the Solanaceae family. It was domesticated from a wild, prickly progenitor carrying small, round, non‐anthocyanic fruits. We obtained a novel, highly contiguous genome assembly of the eggplant ‘67/3’ reference line, by Hi‐C retrofitti...

Seed priming can circumvent poor germination rate and uniformity, frequently reported in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) and its crop wild relatives (CWRs). However, there is still a gap of knowledge on how these treatments impact the pre-germinative metabolism in a genotype- and/or species-dependent manner. The CWR Solanum villosum Miller (hairy n...

Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is a complex trait of great interest whose improvement represents a strategy to maintain high crop yield reducing N-supply. We report the transcriptomic analysis of four NUE-contrasting eggplants to identify key genes related to the NUE in root and shoot, after short- and long-term low-N exposure. Differentially expres...

Flowering and fruiting are processes subject to complex control by environmental and endogenous signals. Endogenous signals comprise, besides classical phytohormones, also signaling peptides and miniproteins. Tomato cystine-knot miniproteins (TCMPs), which belong to a Solanaceous-specific group of Cys-rich protein family, have been recently involve...

Eggplant is the second most important solanaceous berry-producing crop after tomato. Despite mapping studies based on bi-parental progenies and GWAS approaches having been performed, an eggplant intraspecific high-resolution map is still lacking. We developed a RIL population from the intraspecific cross ‘305E40’, (androgenetic introgressed line ca...

Seed priming, a pre-sowing technique that enhances the antioxidant/DNA repair activities during the pre-germinative metabolism, still retains empirical features. We explore for the first time the molecular dynamics of pre-germinative metabolism in primed eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) seeds in order to identify hallmarks (expression patterns of an...

Here we focus on the highly conserved MYB-bHLH-WD repeat (MBW) transcriptional complex model in eggplant, which is pivotal in the transcriptional regulation of the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway. Through a genome-wide approach performed on the recently released Eggplant Genome (cv. 67/3) previously identified, and reconfirmed by us, members belon...

Here we focus on the highly conserved MYB-bHLH-WD repeat (MBW) transcriptional complex model in eggplant, which is pivotal in the transcriptional regulation of the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway. Through a genome-wide approach performed on the recently released Eggplant Genome (cv. 67/3) previously identified, and reconfirmed by us, members belon...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) yield is highly sensitive to N fertilization, the excessive use of which is responsible for environmental and human health damage. Lowering N input together with the selection of improved Nitrogen‐Use‐Efficiency (NUE) genotypes, more able to uptake, utilize, and remobilize N available in soils, can be challenging to...

The present study was carried out with the aim to elucidate, at the proteomic level, the defense mechanisms triggered by the resistance locus Rfo-sa1.

With approximately 450 species, spiny Solanum species constitute the largest monophyletic group in the Solanaceae family, but a high-quality genome assembly from this group is presently missing. We obtained a chromosome-anchored genome assembly of eggplant (Solanum melongena), containing 34,916 genes, confirming that the diploid gene number in the...

Single primer enrichment technology (SPET) is a new, robust, and customizable solution for targeted genotyping. Unlike genotyping by sequencing (GBS), and like DNA chips, SPET is a targeted genotyping technology, relying on the sequencing of a region flanking a primer. Its reliance on single primers, rather than on primer pairs, greatly simplifies...

Arabidopsis thaliana At4g17830 codes for a protein showing sequence similarity with the Escherichia coli N-acetylor-nithine deacetylase (EcArgE), an enzyme implicated in the linear ornithine (Orn) biosynthetic pathway. In plants, N-acetylornithine deacetylase (NAOD) activity has yet to be demonstrated; however, At4g17830-silenced and mutant (atnaod...

Both inter- and intraspecific maps have been developed in eggplant. The former benefit from an enhanced frequency of marker polymorphism, but their relevance to marker-assisted crop breeding is limited. The first maps developed could be defined as ‘first generation,’ built up by means of pre-NGS (next-generation sequencing) molecular biology techni...

Grafting is generally considered effective in ameliorating vegetable crop tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. The use of interspecific hybrid as rootstock for eggplant may represent a valid alternative approach to enhance eggplant performance. However, studies on the effects of different rootstocks on eggplant plant vigor, yield, and fruit qu...

BACKGROUND The consumers' perception of the importance of healthy food has promoted the interest towards fruit, vegetables and spices rich in antioxidants. Moreover, changing in eating habits has encouraged the diffusion of ready‐to‐eat commodities with specific merceological standards. In the present study, twelve hot pepper varieties devoted to p...

Poster abstract

Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) is an economically important crop and it is cultivated for its spears. This crop is a perennial and dioecious monocot. Many are the agronomic traits of interest in the asparagus breeding. We are interested to supplement our breeding research with genomic functional studies. To this end, a reliable and efficient...

Hot pepper (Capsicum spp.) is an economically considerable crop, particularly appreciated for its nutritional properties and antioxidants content. Levels of the latter depend on several factors including the cultivar and the environment. In the present study, diversity in morpho-agronomic traits and phytochemical compounds was investigated in 14 ho...

DR2B and DR2C extracts, obtained by ethanolic maceration of peel from commercially and physiologically ripe aubergine berries, were studied for the antioxidative cytoprotective properties and anti-HSV-1 activity, in line with the evidence that several antioxidants can impair viral replication by maintaining reducing conditions in host cells. The an...

DR2B and DR2C extracts, from peel of commercially and physiologically ripe eggplants, were studied for the antioxidative cytoprotective properties and anti-HSV-1 activity, in line with the evidence that several antioxidants can impair viral replication by maintaining reducing conditions into the host cells. The antioxidative cytoprotective effects...

Lo studio delle potenzialità presenti nella biodiversità è fondamentale al fine di identificare le caratteristiche di interesse presenti nel germoplasma per il miglioramento genetico e per la valorizzazione diretta delle risorse genetiche. Il peperoncino è tra le orticole una coltura di rilievo apprezzata per le sue caratteristiche nutrizionali leg...

We have characterized the simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers of the eggplant (Solanum melongena) using a recent high quality sequence of its whole genome. We found nearly 133,000 perfect SSRs, a density of 125.5 SSRs/Mbp, and also about 178,400 imperfect SSRs. Of the perfect SSRs, 15.6% were complex, with two stretches of repeats separated by an...

Grafting of fruiting vegetables is an effective technique to overcome pests and diseases in modern cropping systems and it is often used to improve yield and fruit quality. Eggplant is an important vegetable crop that benefits significantly from grafting. In this regards, the exploitation, valorization and breeding of new rootstock genotypes as pos...

Fusarium spp. and Verticillium spp. are widespread soil pathogens responsible for vascular wilts causing heavy yield losses in eggplant (Solanum melongena) as well as in many other crops. Here we report on the identification of QTLs affecting the resistance to Fusarium and Verticillium in an F2 intraspecific population of 156 individuals bred from...

Endogenous housekeeping genes are traditionally employed to normalize the expression of target genes in RT-qPCR studies. Assuming that a perfect housekeeping suitable for every condition does not exist, expression stability of the chosen reference gene should be evaluated at every new experiment. The housekeeping selection process reveals furthermo...

The TCMP-1 and TCMP-2 genes of tomato code for metallocarboxypeptidase inhibitors and show sequential, tightly regulated expression patterns during flower and fruit development. In particular, TCMP-1 is highly expressed in flower buds before anthesis, while TCMP-2 in ripe fruits. Their expression pattern suggests that they might play a role in frui...

Arabidopsis thaliana At4g17830 codes for a protein showing sequence similarity with the Escherichia coli N-acetylornithine deacetylase (EcArgE), an enzyme implicated in the linear ornithine (Orn) biosynthetic pathway. In plants, N-acetylornithine deacetylase (NAOD) activity has yet to be demonstrated; however, At4g17830-silenced and mutant (atnaod)...

Eggplant, pepper, and tomato are the most exploited berry-producing vegetables within the Solanaceae family. Their genomes differ in size, but each has 12 chromosomes which have undergone rearrangements causing a redistribution of loci. The genome sequences of all three species are available but differ in coverage, assembly quality and percentage o...

List of eggplant QTL identified by Barchi et al. (2012) and Portis et al. (2014, 2015).

The pepper QTL identified by Yarnes et al. (2013).

The pepper markers aligned on pepper genome sequence.

The eggplant and pepper markers grouped by clusters.

The table shows the clusters observed in the alignment of eggplant and pepper markers. The eggplant traits are given in the left column while on the right the pepper traits included in each cluster are reported.

Details of chromosome synteny between tomato CDS and pepper genome. Physical positions of tomato CDS matching pepper genome in detail. The relative position of tomato CDS is shown on the ordinate axis while on the abscissa axis there are the normalized pepper chromosomes. The captions on the right show the chromosome of origin of tomato CDS. Physic...

The eggplant markers aligned on pepper genome sequence.

QTL location (only loci harboring QTL are shown). The figure is complementary with the Supplementary Table S5 and shows the loci bearing both eggplant and pepper markers. The scale shown on the Y axis indicates the LOD score. The scale on the X axis indicates the position on pepper chromosome in Mbps. Map positions of the QTL are given by the peaks...

Eggplant berries are a source of health-promoting metabolites including antioxidant and nutraceutical compounds, mainly anthocyanins and chlorogenic acid; however, they also contain some anti-nutritional compounds such as steroidal glycoalkaloids (SGA) and saponins, which are responsible for the bitter taste of the flesh and with potential toxic ef...

Phenylpropanoids are major secondary metabolites in eggplant (Solanum melongena) fruits. Chlorogenic acid (CGA) accounts for 70 to 90% of total phenolics in flesh tissues, while anthocyanins are mainly present in the fruit skin. As a contribution to the understanding of the peculiar accumulation of these health-promoting metabolites in eggplant, we...

Eggplant is susceptible to fungal wilts caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. melongenae and Verticillium dahliae. Wild and allied relatives represent a good source of resistance and ILs have been obtained through introgression of the Rfo-sa1 locus conferring resistance to Fusarium oxysporum from S. aethiopicum into cultivated eggplant. In this work,...

The technique of in vitro anther culture is the most favorite to incite the production of plants from microspore through direct embryogenesis or regeneration from callus. Anther culture has been employed since 1980s in eggplant to obtain double-haploid plants from microspore derived embryos. From that time it has been refi ned and widely applied bo...

Physico-chemical traits of three eggplant genotypes (''Tunisina " , ''Buia " and ''L 305 ") were evaluated before and after two cooking treatments (grilling and boiling). Different genotypes revealed different changes after cooking, with ''Tunisina " showing a better retention of phytochemicals with respect to other two genotypes. The main physical...

Eggplant is a source of health-promoting metabolites including antioxidant and nutraceutical compounds such as peel anthocyanins and chlorogenic acid of the flesh with anti-diabetic, hypotensive, cardioprotective, and hepatoprotective properties. On the other hand, it is also characterized by the presence of some anti-nutritional compounds such as...

An eggplant ( Solanum melongena ) association panel of 191 accessions, comprising a mixture of breeding lines, old varieties and landrace selections was SNP genotyped and phenotyped for key breeding fruit and plant traits at two locations over two seasons. A genome-wide association (GWA) analysis was performed using the mixed linear model, which ta...

ScopeCystine-knot miniproteins are bioactive molecules with a broad range of potential therapeutic applications. Recently, it was demonstrated that two tomato cystine-knot miniproteins (TCMPs) exhibit in vitro anti-angiogenic activity on human umbilical vein cells (HUVEC). The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of a fruit-speci...

The genome-wide association (GWA) approach represents an alternative to biparental linkage mapping for determining the genetic basis of trait variation. Both approaches rely on recombination to re-arrange the genome, and seek to establish correlations between phenotype and genotype. The major advantages of GWA lie in being able to sample a much wid...

Poster Communication Abstract – 3.22 ISBN 978-88-904570-4-3

In spite of its widespread cultivation and nutritional and economic importance, the eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) genome has not been extensively explored. A lack of knowledge of the patterns of inheritance of key agronomic traits has hindered the exploitation of marker technologies to accelerate its genetic improvement. An already established F2...

Distribution of the FPKM values as a function of the assembled transcripts across the four organs.

Summary statistics of transcript assembly at k-mer from 31 to 51 in Velvet–Oases and single k-mer in Trinity (minimum transcript length = 200 bp).

Functional annotation and FPKM values for the highly expressed genes.

Mining of the A. donax transcriptome for putative transcript homologs of stress-related genes.

Classification of over- and under-represented GO categories across the four organs.

The development of inexpensive and highly productive biomass sources of biofuel is a priority in global climate change biology. Arundo donax, also known as the giant reed, is recognized as one of the most promising nonfood bioenergy crops in Europe. Despite its relevance, to date no genomic resources are available to support the characterization of...

The eggplant is one of the most important solanaceous crops and is widely cultivated across the world for its fruits, mainly used as a vegetable. Wild relatives of eggplant have been shown to be important sources for transferring tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses and other agronomically important traits in cultivated background. However, mos...

The development of inexpensive and highly productive biomass sources of biofuel is a priority in global climate change biology. Arundo donax, also known as the giant reed, is recognized as one of the most promising nonfood bioenergy crops in Europe. Despite its relevance, to date no genomic resources are available to support the characterization of...

A collection of 238 eggplant breeding lines, heritage varieties and selections within local landraces provenanced from Asia and the Mediterranean Basin was phenotyped with respect to key plant and fruit traits, and genotyped using 24 microsatellite loci distributed uniformly throughout the genome. STRUCTURE analysis based on the genotypic data iden...

Solanum torvum Sw is worldwide employed as rootstock for eggplant cultivation because of its vigour and resistance/tolerance to the most serious soil-borne diseases as bacterial, fungal wilts and root-knot nematodes. The little information on Solanum torvum (hereafter Torvum) resistance mechanisms, is mostly attributable to the lack of genomic tool...

A chemical and bioactive quality evaluation of phytochemicals content of ten eggplant lines and three allied species (S. sodomaeum, S. aethiopicum and S. integrifolium) was performed. The eggplant lines were divided into the two subgroups of delphinidin-3-rutinoside (D3R) and nasunin (NAS) typologies, on the basis of the anthocyanin detected in the...

Both inter- and intra-specific maps have been developed in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.). The former benefit from an enhanced frequency of marker polymorphism, but their relevance to marker-assisted crop breeding is limited. Combining the restriction-site associated DNA strategy with high throughput sequencing has facilitated the discovery of a l...

Parameters associated to the 261 loci used for synteny and collinearity between the eggplant and tomato genomes. (XLSX)

Comparative maps and syntenic relationships between eggplant and tomato chromosomes. Each eggplant chromosome (in white) and its corresponding tomato physical chromosome (in yellow) are connected by solid lines (in green). Distances on the eggplant chromosomes are given in cM, and on the tomato chromosome segments in Mbp. (PDF)