Wild potato collecting expedition in Southern Peru (Departments of Apurimac, Arequipa, Cusco, Moquegua Puno, Tacna) in 1998:: Taxonomy and new genetic resources

Peru has 103 taxa of wild potatoes (species, subspecies, varieties, and forms) according to Hawkes (1990; modified by us by a reduction of species in the Solanum brevicaule complex) and including taxa described by C. Ochoa since 1989. Sixty-nine of these 103 taxa (67%) were unavailable from any of the world's genebanks and 85 of them (83%) had less than three germplasm accessions. We conducted a collaborative Peru (INIA), United States (NRSP-6), and International Potato Center (CIP) wild potato (Solanum sect. Petota) collecting expedition in Peru to collect; germplasm and gather taxonomic data. This is the first of a series of planned expeditions from 1998-2002. Wt collected from February 18 to April 18, 1998, in the southern departments of Apurimac, Arequipa, Cusco, Moquegua, Puno, and Tacna. We made 57 germplasm collections, including 14 taxa that are the first available as germplasm for any country (Solanum aymaraesense, S. chillonanum, S. incasicum, S. megistacrolobum subsp. megistacrolobum f. purpureum, S. longiusculus, S. multiflorum, S. pillahuatense, S. sawyeri, S. sandemanii, S. tacnaense, S. tarapatanum, S. urubambae, S. velardei, S. villuspetalum), and two additional taxa that are the first available for Peru but with germplasm from Bolivia (S. megistacrolobum subsp. toralapanum, S. yungasense). Collections also were made for the rare taxa S. acroscopicum, S. buesii, S. limbaniense, and S. santolallae. Our collections suggest the following minimum synonymy may be needed for Peruvian potatoes: S. sawyeri as a synonym of S. tuberosum; S. hawkesii and S. incasicum as synonyms of S. raphanifolium; S. multiflorum and S. villuspetalum as synonyms of S. urubambae.