Eggplants cultivated or wild relatives, cover a wide range of Solanum species (subgenus Leptostemonum), the geographic origin of which is mainly Asia and Africa.  The best known species is Solanum melongena, domesticated in the Indo-Burma region, and now cultivated all over the world.  Several public institutions in Asia, Europe and North America maintain genetic resources of this species.  Other cultivated eggplants related to S. melongena, such as the scarlet eggplant (Solanum aethiopicum) and the gboma eggplant (Solanum macrocarpon), are cultivated mainly in Africa.  The wild species related to all cultivated eggplants comprise 200 or so species, almost half of the huge subgenus Leptostemonum.  Beyond the conventional breeding use of this eggplant germplasm, many other potentialities exist.  A preliminary eggplant genetic map, based on the use of RAPDs on an intraspecific F2 progeny, is available.  A more extensive map, based on a set of markers common to well mapped Solanaceae such as potato, tomato and pepper, is also being produced for discovering possible syntenic relationships.  Such markers, and others specific to S. melongena, should also allow the molecular tagging of eggplant agronomic traits, some of which are common to other Solanaceae, inorder to provide powerful tools to eggplant breeders.  Furthermore, no resistance has been found in S. melongena germplasm, up to now, for some serious pests (such as Meloidogyne incognita) and diseases (such a Verticillium dahlia) whereas such resistances, which are monogenetically inherited, are available in tomato:  those genes could be used to produce resistant eggplants by genetic engineering.  Lastly, the whole set of eggplant genetic resources, which comprises a significant part of the genus Solanum, needs to be investigated by molecular tools to produce a functional taxonomic treatment of subgenus Leptostemonum, as well as to help answer questions about Solanum phylogeny.