Schriften zu Genetischen Ressourcen - Genres

Development of Vavilov’s concept of the intraspecific classification of cultivated plants
History of systematics of cultivated plants
The history of systematics of cultivated plants goes back to pre-Linnaean times. In
particular, CLUSIUS’s collection of tulips is well known, where special emphasis was
given to characters important for gardeners and customers (CLUSIUS 1601, TJON SIE
FAT 1992).
CAESALPINO, the “Aristotle of the 16 th century”, was the first to suggest to base plant
classification on characters inherent in a plant, instead of those important for man
(KOMARNITSKY et al. 1975).
LINNAEUS regarded some domesticated plants as conspecific with wild species, but
with a different intraspecific rank analogous to “subspecies”, whereas he regarded
other domesticated plants as distinct species and then subdivided these into intraspecific
groups. Thus, the description of the domesticated species Lathyrus sativus
L. indicates the blue colour of flowers (flore coeruleo), but in so doing the group
of white-flowered white-seeded plants is distinguished (b. flore fructuque albo).
Within another domesticated species, Lathyrus odoratus L., LINNAEUS considered two
“geographical” groups, the Cypriote and the Ceylonese group (a. L. siculus; b. L.
zeylanicus), and pointed out their distinctions in flower colour. Later researchers retained
both wild and domesticated Linnaean species of Lathyrus on a full scale, but
domesticated species were considered since then as fractional, and the genus as
subdivided into groups of species (LINNAEUS subdivided the genus into three groups
according to the number of flowers – one, two or many).
Peculiarities of systematics of domesticated plants
Systematics of domesticated plants, being an integral part of general plant systematics,
has common purposes with the latter, but also a number of specific features.
Not only has it a great theoretical importance as a basis for the development of
theoretical biology, and research into speciation and the species structure, but also it
has great practical importance for solving problems of breeding, introduction and
plant use. The subject in this case is the domesticated species, which has a common
origin with its closest relatives, namely wild species. On the one hand, they are connected
into an integral system, but on the other hand, the domesticated species developed
under purposeful artificial selection and differ more or less essentially from
their wild relatives by a complex of morphological and biological characters.
VAVILOV (1965) noted that “the study of a large number of samples under cultivation
will necessarily reveal the polymorphic nature of species” and considered the species
as a system “differentiated into geographical and ecological types and sometimes
62