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Comparing Medicinal Uses of Eggplant and Related Solanaceae in China, India, and the Philippines Suggests the Independent Development of Uses, Cultural Diffusion, and Recent Species Substitutions

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Comparing Medicinal Uses of Eggplant and Related Solanaceae in China, India, and the Philippines Suggests the Independent Development of Uses, Cultural Diffusion, and Recent Species Substitutions

Comparing Medicinal Uses of Eggplant and Related Solanaceae in China, India, and the Philippines Suggests the Independent Development of Uses, Cultural Diffusion, and Recent Species Substitutions. The ways in which geographically separate communities use crops reflect the agricultural and cultural influences on each community. The eggplant (Solanum melongena L.; Solanaceae), which was domesticated in South and Southeast Asia, has long been used in a variety of medicinal and culinary preparations across many different Asian ethnolinguistic groups. Here, we report the total uses for eggplant and sixteen related species in three regions, India, southern China, and Malesia, and conduct a comparative analysis in order to form hypotheses about how influences on plant use in one region could have affected use and evolutionary trajectories in other regions. Results from literature review and 101 interviews show a total of 77 medicinal attributes for eggplant, with few similar attributes mentioned in different regions, leading us to hypothesize that largely pristine (i.e., without influence from other regions) development of uses, which could serve as selection pressures, occurred for eggplant in India, southern China, and Malesia. Results also show that many Solanum species have been fluidly adopted into uses developed for other species in a single region.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by The New York Botanical Garden Genomics Program, the Chatham Fellowship in Medicinal Botany, and The Garden Club of America. R. Meyer was supported by the City University of New York Science Fellowship, the National Science Foundation GK-12 Program, and the National Science Foundation Plant Genome Postdoctoral Fellowship during the research or writing of this work. Great thanks are given to the following people who aided with interviews and literature searches: D. Tandang, D. Madulid, A. Tungpalan, D. McClelland, Y.F. Zhao and family, S. Harrell, S. Ahmed, J. Sathe, A. Paul, D. Deb, the faculty of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, the Kunming Institute of Botany, the Deccan College Sanskrit Dictionary Project, the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center, and the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources. The authors express their gratitude to the communities that have continued to share and celebrate traditional plant use knowledge.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Genomics Program, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY, 10458, USA

    Rachel S. Meyer & Amy Litt

  2. The Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, USA

    Rachel S. Meyer

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Lehman College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 250 Bedford Park Boulevard West, Bronx, NY, 10468, USA

    Maryam Bamshad

  4. Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PY, UK

    Dorian Q. Fuller

  5. Department of Biology, New York University, 12 Waverly Place, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Rachel S. Meyer

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Correspondence to Rachel S. Meyer.

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1Received 24 June 2013; accepted 17 January 2014; published online _______.

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Appendix 1

Table of medicinal attributes of sixteen Solanum species from total evidence of interviews. Mention of at least one attribute in a source was marked with a +. (DOCX 763 kb)

Appendix 2

Table of eggplant medicinal attributes from total evidence of interviews, literature, and websites. Red + were only mentioned by a single informant or from a single written source. Black + were mentioned in multiple sources. (PDF 53 kb)

Appendix 3

Table of eggplant medicinal attributes from literature and websites only. Numbers in red were only listed in a single source, and numbers in black were listed in multiple sources. (PDF 57 kb)

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Meyer, R.S., Bamshad, M., Fuller, D.Q. et al. Comparing Medicinal Uses of Eggplant and Related Solanaceae in China, India, and the Philippines Suggests the Independent Development of Uses, Cultural Diffusion, and Recent Species Substitutions. Econ Bot 68, 137–152 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-014-9267-6

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