Morphological and Biochemical Investigation of Five Solanum Species

Solanaceae is one of the families with a number of important agricultural plants as well as many toxic plants. In the present investigation a comparative and comprehensive leaf, branch, fruit and seed have been analyzed and complemented with leaf proteins for identifications. As expected taxonomical characters within Solanum species revealed great morphological differences. Some Solanum species are phenotypically close to each other, but have different taxonomic status. These morphological similarities lead to difficulty in identification of these species. Hence, a study was undertaken to understand the similarities and dissimilarities at morphological and protein level. Molecular weight of the protein of the five species varied from 199.53kD to 1.78kD. The result showed S. surattense and S. trilobatum were closer morphologically whereas, S. surattense and S. melongena were closer at protein level.