Cultigen

Cultigen

The term cultigen (from the Latin cultus ‘cultivated’ and gens ‘gentle’) or cultivated plant refers to a plant that has been deliberately altered or selected by man.
Cultigens therefore derive from artificial selection. These plants have commercial value in horticulture, agriculture or forestry. Because cultigens are defined by their mode of origin and not where they grow, plants that meet this definition remain cultigens whether they are naturalized, deliberately planted in the wild, or cultivated.
Cultigens are obtained in the following ways:
– through the selection of wild or cultivated variants, including vegetative sports (aberrant growth that can be reliably reproduced in cultivation);
– from plants that are the result of genetic improvement and plant selection programs;
– from genetically modified plants (plants modified by deliberate implantation of genetic material);
– or from chimeras-grafts (plants grafted to produce mixed tissues with grafting material coming from wild plants, particular selections or hybrids).
The word cultigen was coined in 1918 by Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858–1954), an American horticulturist, botanist, and co-founder of the American Society for Horticultural Science.
This botanist was aware that he was defining special categories for those cultivated plants that had arisen from intentional human activity and that would not fit neatly into the Linnaean hierarchical classification used by the International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature (which later became the International Code of Nomenclature ).