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Solanine or a preparation of mixed glycoalkaloids from potatoes naturally infected with the late-blight fungus, Phytophthora infestans, was injected into fertile chicken eggs between 0 and 26 h of incubation, before formation of the neural tube. The embryos were examined after a total of 72 h of incubation. Various abnormalities were found, the most conspicuous being absence of the tail or trunk below the wing bud (rumplessness). A statistically significant proportion of the abnormal embryos showed malformations that seemed to be related to this condition; these included fluid- or blood-filled vesicles in the lower trunk or tail region on one or both sides of the neural tube. Such abnormalities were not observed in control embryos.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) procedure to quantitatively determine cu-chaconine and ol-solanine in potato tubers was developed. Five varieties of tubers, stored at'two different temperatures for 9 months, were analyzed for their a-chaconine and a-solanine content. The values for a-chaconine ranged from 3.89-23.04 mg/lOOg fresh tuber whereas for w-solanine the amount varied from 1.69-12.51 mg/lOOg fresh tuber depending on the variety. The coefficient of variation was rather high between different samples of the same tuber variety, but for the same samples, the coefficient of variation was excellent (1.6-6.3%). The amount of glycoalkaloids determined by HPLC is in good agreement with those values obtained from the widely used titration method.

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