ISHS Acta Horticulturae 182: I International Symposium on Taxonomy of Cultivated Plants
A COMPUTERISED SYSTEMATICS OF TAXA OF CULTIVATED PLANTS |
| Authors: | A. Santiago, S.N. Santiago |
| Abstract:
A computer breakthrough in integrating a mathematical system of biological systematics, called enneametric systematics with computer simulated taxa of subtaxa of tripartite characters and a computer program for the mathematics of the 3x3 contingency table has been found and is predicted to be practicable in developing a coherent systematics of taxa of cultivated plants and all biological beings, living and dead. The mathematical rationale, methods and practicability of representing databases of biological characters, firstly as parabolic, hyperbolic and polymodal curves of variation, secondly transforming them into tripartite and ranked tripartite frequency distribution histograms and thirdly and lastly confirming them as tripartite and ranked tripartite characters are demonstrated with the example of the colour spectrum represented by the acronym VIBGYOR which may be considered a polymodal system of variation of a character. The procedures of mathematical processing of consistent databases of tripartite and ranked tripartite characters consistently in computers with the mathematics of the 3x3 contingency table to rank the correlation values, followed by ranking the hierarchy of pairs of tripartite characters for use in systematising all the possible subtaxa of a taxon into divisable, nested and ranked enneametric matrices are outlined. The methods of enneametric systematics are useful in detailed description of variants of a taxon by scoring a common data format of tripartitite and ranked tripartite characters of the taxon, constructing enneametric keys to the variants of the taxon in order to identify common variants as well as new variants which may be found or produced in the taxon and also to predict the parents which should be chosen to breed the desired progeny. Intensive studies of the pattern of distribution of the subtaxa of any taxon will suggest that organic evolution can be pictured as a centrifuge. The centripetal forces serve to conserve and the centrifugal forces serve to generate evolution in biological organisation of the taxon. Researchers in taxa of cultivated plants at germplasm centres where research is multidisciplinary, are in very favourable positions to conduct exhaustive researches in enneametric systematics to develop coherent schemes of systematics of taxa of cultivated plants in a short time for international use for all time and are urged to lead the community of biologists to adopt enneametric systematics as a universal system of biological systematics. | |
Download Adobe Acrobat Reader (free software to read PDF files) | |
