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Purchase seeds or tubers of Solanum medians

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Description

Solanum medians is a wild potato species native to central and southern Peru, just barely reaching into Chile.  Plants reach about two feet tall.  Flowers purple.  Berries large, round, green to purplish.

The specific epithet, medians, means “intermediate,” probably referring to the size of the plant.  It is formed from the Latin word “medius,” for “middle.”  While there is no completely standardized pronunciation for scientific names, the most common way to pronounce this species is probably so-LAY-num MEE-dee-ans.

This species has some of the highest measured amylose content of any potato species, reaching as much as 51.4% (Jansen 2001, as S. sandemanii).

Resistances

This species can survive frosts down to 27 degrees F (-3 C) (Li 1977).  Vega (1995) found that this species is less frost tolerant than domesticated potato.

Condition	Type	Level of Resistance	Source
Globodera pallida (Pale Cyst Nematode)	Invertebrate	Resistant	Castelli 2003
Globodera rostochiensis (Potato Cyst/Golden Nematode)	Invertebrate	Resistant	Castelli 2003
Myzus persicae (Green Peach Aphid)	Invertebrate	Somewhat resistant	Machida-Hirano 2015

Glykoalkaloid content

Images

Cultivation

The USDA potato genebank has observed that germination of some accessions of this species is inhibited by GA3 (Bamberg 1999).

Towill (1983) found that seeds of this species stored at 1 to 3 degrees C germinated at 88% after 14 years.

Breeding

Crosses with S. tuberosum

Female	Male	Berry Set	Seed Set	Germination	Ploidy	Source
S. tuberosum	S. medians	Low	None			Jackson (1999)
S. medians	S. tuberosum	None	None			Jackson (1999)

Crosses with other species

Jackson (1999) found 2-14% 2n pollen in varieties of this species.

Female	Male	Berry Set	Seed Set	Germination	Ploidy	Source

References

Solanum medians at Solanaceae Source

Solanum medians at GRIN Taxonomy