Schriften zu Genetischen Ressourcen - Genres

Mansfeld's Encyclopedia of Agricultural and Horticultural Crops and the Mansfeld phenomenon
Nomenclatural codes are a help in stabilization of scientific names, but there remain
some difficult problems to be resolved. For example MABBERLEY et al. (2001) recently
proved that Malus pumila Mill. should be used as the correct name of the cultivated
apple instead of the familiar Malus domestica Borkh. Moreover, they even say that
the genera Pyrus L. (the pear) and Malus Mill. (the apple) will be recombined
ultimately under the older name Pyrus following molecular phylogenetic data. – For
our reference book we should carefully consider such developments but we should
never forget our responsibility for practical naming. The motto should be: As much
stability in botanical nomenclature as possible. Changes should be made only when
these are strictly necessary. An example in this direction was given by R.N. Lester
and J.G. Hawkes in the recent Mansfeld edition. They did not unify Solanum L. and
Lycopersicon Mill., so potato and tomato will keep different scientific genus names as
well as vernacular names. – Solanum uporo Dunal in DC. is an example of a plant
used and cultivated only historically, because the fruit was commonly consumed by
cannibals in association with human flesh.
Other species, such as Allium victorialis L., have only recently been taken into
cultivation, because they are being over-collected from their wild habitat (BERIDZE et
al., 1987). In Figure 4, the editor of the 3 rd Mansfeld edition is shown while fishing
successfully in the pickles after one week of hunting fruitlessly for this taxon in the
Central Caucasus for the Gatersleben Allium project. In future, new crops for new
uses will be found even among hitherto undescribed plants from the tropics. An
example is the tropical liana Ancistrocladus korupensis, described by THOMAS and
GEREAU (1993) from Cameroon, which contains michellamine B, an alkaloid with
antiviral activity against HIV.
Mansfeld’s Encyclopedia seems fairly complete and the targeted user community
should find all the data they expect to find in this book. This was even investigated
experimentally: when presenting his “Vorläufiges Verzeichnis”, Rudolf Mansfeld
asked the ethnologist Eva Lips for three species names. She named Bixa orellana,
Ananas sagenaria, and Acer saccharum. All had been included. – Prof. K. Bachmann
continued this public experiment in a seminar forty years later: he asked a Thai
colleague from the auditorium for a vernacular name of an uncommon crop. She
mentioned “kamin”, and this name for Curcuma longa L. had in fact been recorded by
the author, Dr. J. Kruse.
In the future we have to realise a warning formulated by SMALL and CATLING (1999) in
their “Canadian Medicinal Crops”: “The quality of information on the internet varies
from excellent to erroneous and highly misleading.” That means that the
responsibility of authors in selecting relevant information for their respective crop
groups will be even higher for a future edition of Mansfeld’s Encyclopedia. Nowadays
we have much more information but increasingly less knowledge. “We have not only
genetic erosion in plant genetic resources, but also competence erosion” said Prof.
28