<p>This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p> <p>Recent progress in understanding the phylogeny of the economically important plant
family Solanaceae makes this an ideal time to develop models for linking the new
data on plant genomics with the huge diversity of naturally occurring species in the
family. Phylogenetics provides the framework with which to investigate these linkages
but, critically, good species-level descriptive resources for the Solanaceae community
are currently missing. Phylogeny in the family as a whole is briefly reviewed,
and the new NSF Planetary Biodiversity Inventories project ‘PBI: Solanum—a
worldwide treatment’ is described. The aims of this project are to provide species-level
information across the global scope of the genus <italic>Solanum</italic> and to make this available
over the Internet. The project is in its infancy, but will make available nomenclatural
information, descriptions, keys and illustrative material for all of the approximately
1500 species of <italic>Solanum</italic>. With this project, the opportunity of linking valid, up-to-date
taxonomic information about wild species of <italic>Solanum</italic> with the genomic information
being generated about the economically important species of the genus (potato, tomato
and eggplant) can be realized. The phylogenetic framework in which the PBI project is
set is also of enormous potential benefit to other workers on <italic>Solanum</italic>. The community
of biologists working with Solanaceae has a unique opportunity to effectively link
genomics and taxonomy for better understanding of this important family, taking
plant biology to a new level for the next century.</p>
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Comp Funct Genomics. 2004 Apr; 5(3):285-291