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Purchase seeds or tubers of Solanum hjertingii

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Description

Solanum hjertingii is a northern Mexican species, primarily Coahuila and Nuevo Leon.  Small plants, reaching about 7 to 14 inches tall.  Stolons as long as three feet.  Tubers usually 1 to 2 inches in diameter, sometimes as much as 3 inches.  Violet flowers.

The specific epithet, hjertingii, honors Danish botanist Jans Peter Knudsen Hjerting.  While there is no completely standardized pronunciation for scientific names, the most common way to pronounce this species is probably so-LAY-num yert-ing-ee-eye.

This species is an allotetraploid, carrying clade 1 and clade 4 genomes.  Hawkes (1990) expected an AABB genome configuration for this species, confirmed by Pendinen (2008), who determined that the A genome contributor was S. verrucosum and the B genome contributor was one of S. cardiophyllum, S. ehrenbergii, or S. jamesii.  This species appears to be closely related to S. stoloniferum (Van den Berg 2002).

Resistances

S. hjertingii is very resistant to bruising compared to domesticated varieties (Gubb 1989) and has low levels of polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme implicated in potato browning (Sim 1997, Brown 1999).

Vega (1995) found that this species is less frost tolerant than domesticated potato.

I have noticed that this species is unusually vulnerable to black scurf here.  I rarely observe it on domesticated varieties or other wild species, but it appears reliably on S. hjertingii.  You can even see it in the title picture.

Some accessions of this species carry the Rpi-blb3 gene, conferring late blight resistance.

Condition	Type	Level of Resistance	Source
Alternaria solani (Early Blight)	Fungus	Somewhat resistant	Jansky 2008
Bruising	Abiotic	Somewhat resistant	Machida-Hirano 2015
Globodera pallida (Pale Cyst Nematode)	Invertebrate	Not resistant	Bachmann-Pfabe 2019
Myzus persicae (Green Peach Aphid)	Invertebrate	Somewhat resistant	Radcliffe 1970
Pectobacterium carotovorum (Blackleg/Soft Rot)	Bacteria	Somewhat resistant	Chung 2011, Machida-Hirano 2015
Phytophthora infestans (Late Blight)	Fungus	Somewhat resistant	Bachmann-Pfabe 2019, Karki 2020
Potato Virus Y (PVY)	Virus	Somewhat resistant	Cai 2011
Rhizoctonia solani (Black Scurf)	Fungus	Not resistant	–
Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (White Mold)	Fungus	Not resistant	Jansky 2006

Glykoalkaloid content

I have found no account of tuber glycoalkaloids in S. hjertingii.  Foliar glycoalkaloids appear to consist primarily of solanine and chaconine (Gregory 1981).

Many of the tubers that I have sampled from plants of this species seemed entirely palatable.  A few had a mild bitter aftertaste.

Images

Cultivation

I have found seeds of this species easy to germinate using the standard conditions for S. tuberosum.

Towill (1983) found that seeds of this species stored at 1 to 3 degrees C germinated at 82% after 26 years.

Breeding

Culley (2002) found that triploid progeny of diploid S. tuberosum x S. hjertingii were resistant to bruising and low in polyphenol oxidase.

Crosses with S. tuberosum

Female	Male	Berry Set	Seed Set	Germ	Ploidy	Source
S. hjertingii	S. tuberosum (4x)	None	None			Jackson (1999)
S. tuberosum (2x)	S. hjertingii	Yes	Yes	Yes	3x	Culley (2002)
S. tuberosum (4x)	S. hjertingii	Low	None			Jackson (1999)

Crosses with other species

Watanabe (1991) found that 9.1% of varieties of this species produced 2n pollen and Jackson (1999) found 6-21%, which would be effectively octoploid and probably 4EBN.

Female	Male	Berry Set	Seed Set	Germ	Ploidy	Source

References

Solanum hjertingii at Solanaceae Source

Solanum hjertingii at GRIN Taxonomy

Solanum hjertingii at CIP