| Summary: | Selection and breeding of eggplant (<i>Solanum melongena</i>) materials with good performance under low nitrogen (N) fertilization inputs is a major breeding objective to reduce environmental degradation, risks for human health, and production costs. <i>Solanum elaeagnifolium</i>, an eggplant wild relative, is a potential source of variation for introgression breeding in eggplant. We evaluated 24 plant, fruit, and composition traits in a set of genotyped advanced backcrosses (BC2 and BC3) of eggplant with <i>S. elaeagnifolium</i> introgressions under low N conditions. Significant differences were found between the two parents for most traits, and a wide phenotypic diversity was observed in the advanced backcrosses, with some individuals with a much higher yield, nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), and phenolics content than the <i>S. melongena</i> parent. In general, the lower the proportion of <i>S. elaeagnifolium</i> genome introgressed in the advanced backcrosses, the higher was the general phenotypic resemblance to <i>S. melongena</i>. Putative QTLs were detected for stem diameter (<i>pd4</i>), presence of prickles in stem (<i>ps6</i>), leaf (<i>pl6</i>) and fruit calyx (<i>pc6</i>), fruit width (<i>fw7</i>), chlorogenic acid content (<i>cg5</i>), total phenolic acid peaks area (<i>ph6</i>), chlorogenic acid peak area (<i>ca1</i>), and phenolic acids pattern (<i>cp1</i>). Our results reveal that introgression breeding of eggplant with <i>S. elaeagnifolium</i> has a great interest for eggplant breeding, particularly for adaptation to low N conditions. These materials can potentially contribute to the development of improved eggplant varieties for a more sustainable agriculture.
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