ahahn-gbif
commented
7 years ago Open ahahn-gbif opened 7 years ago
ahahn-gbif
commented
7 years ago 
dagendresen
commented
7 years ago Cultivar names and landrace names are described to be somewhat loosely connected to rank. A rank might perhaps be called "cultivar" and "cultivar group" (but probably not "landrace").
I believe it would be very useful to start collecting checklists of known cultivar names and landrace names to be published in GBIF.
Recommendation 6.4.1 from the GBIF Data fitness for use in agrobiodiversity task group report call for checklists on crop wild relatives, cultivars, landraces and neglected and underutilized crops in GBIF [1].
[1] http://www.gbif.org/resource/82283
The Cultivated Plant Code (ICNCP) [2] describes nomenclatural rules for naming cultivars in agriculture and horticulture. The rules for naming cultivated plants following the Cultivated Plant Code [2] are summarized by the Cultivated Plant Taxonomy Group [3]. There are some registration authorities coordinated by the International Cultivar Registration Authority (ICRA). However, it seems to me that such official lists includes only a very small subset of known cultivar names. And that the principles of the Cultivated Plant Code is not (yet?) generally/fully accepted by the genebanks nor (yet?) widely used by plant breeders. Cultivar names (I assume also including landrace names) should be more or less unique within a genus, however, the known names are still not at all (yet?) coordinated on the international level (e.g. under ICRA). Starting by collecting cultivar names checklists to be published in GBIF might be a very nice first step. But I believe that much work would remain before a real GBIF Taxon backbone for cultivar names would be possible (if at all possible).
[2] Brickell et al (2016) International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP or Cultivated Plant Code). 9th edition. International Society for Horticultural Science, ISBN 978-94-6261-116-0. [3] http://www.hortax.org.uk/rules-of-naming.html
For cultivated plants in genebanks, the cultivar names are often included as "Accession name" in the genebank databases. The "accession name" (MCPD:ACCENAME) [4] is sometimes the name of the cultivar or landrace and sometimes some other descriptive name. E.g. accession CItr 3275 in GRIN, the accession name "Lofthouse" is typified as a "cultivar name" [5]; Accession CI 2278, accession name "Chinese Awnless" is typified as "local name" (i.e. landrace) [6].
[4] http://rs.gbif.org/extension/germplasm/GermplasmAccession.xml#germplasmIdentifier [5] https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail.aspx?id=1023994 [6] https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail.aspx?id=1019368
See also the comment from the curator of GRIN Taxonomy (Wiersema 2004) [7]:
Names treated under the cultivated code (ICNCP; Trehane et al., 1995) i.e. cultivars, may appear in the accession area of GRIN. Their inclusion and verification is the responsibility of the germplasm maintenance site. Expansion to accommodate cultivar-group names, as defined in the ICNCP, is now under consideration.
[7] Wiersema (2004) The role of the GRIN database in promoting stabilization of economic plant names. Acta Hort. 634, https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/40335/PDF
NordGen maintains a list of Nordic cultivar names (as a separate list from the "accessions") [8] that I reported as a data mobilization target [9].
[8] http://www.nordgen.org/sesto/index.php?scp=ngb&thm=sesto&lev=&rec=&lst=cul [9] https://github.com/gbif/data-mobilization/issues/21
To be able to cover relevant use cases in the field of agrobiodiversity, taxon names need to include relevant infraspecific levels, eg. cultivars and landraces.
For changing the backbone and API rank vocabulary (from Markus):
Required: good source lists (@dschigel)
Requested by: fitness for use task group on agrobiodiversity (2015), TG report see http://www.gbif.org/resource/82283
also relates to: http://dev.gbif.org/issues/browse/POR-2789