Schriften zu Genetischen Ressourcen - Genres

T. SMEKALOVA
consisting of an enormous number of varieties”. Developing VAVILOV’s concept of
species, SINSKAYA (1979) considered the species as a “system of populations” and
regarded the population as “the lowest, elementary building block of the species”.
Many Russian researchers considered the species structure as a system of these
building blocks, namely populations (e.g., ZAVADSKY 1968, AGAEV 1987). They
pointed out that the most important characteristic of populations is their intrapopulation
genetic variability, which manifests itself in several or numerous clearly
distinct discrete (qualitative) morphological or other phenotypical characters (polymorphism)
(KONAREV 1995).
Taxonomic units in the systematics of domesticated plants
Taxonomic units to recognise these intraspecific changes are intraspecific taxa of
different rank.
The traditions of Linnaean systematics were extended to cultivated plants during the
past two centuries. As early as in the 19 th century, the systematics of cultivated
plants began to appear more and more insistently as an independent branch of plant
systematics. It became a theoretical basis for agronomists and plant breeders, i.e., all
who dealt with cultivated plants.
In the 20 th century, botanists proposed special taxonomic categories for cultivated
plants. Most frequently, “cultivar” and “group of cultivars” were used (MANSFELD 1953,
1954, and other authors). Likewise, in our country, these were, for example, for the
Fabaceae, ZALKIND (1937), GOVOROV (1937), BARULINA (1937), DITMER (1937) and
many others. In the 1940-50s, a wide range of extensively elaborated classifications
was proposed for polymorphic species of cultivated plants.
The International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP), first published
in 1953 (STEARN 1953), formalised the distinctions between classifications of
wild and of cultivated plants and proposed a hierarchy of nomenclatural combinations
for different taxa of cultivated plants. This Code legitimised the taxon rank “cultivar”,
to establish “uniformity, exactness and stability in the naming of agricultural, garden
and forestry cultivars.”
However, the ICNCP did not separate systematics of cultivated plants from systematics
of wild plants, and names of genera and species epithets should conform to
the rules of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (GREUTER et al. 1994),
which regulates nomenclature of wild plant taxa. There is a very deep problem behind
this question, and the long-felt need of its detailed discussion now becomes urgent
in the scientific community.
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