Cultivar

Cultivar

The term cultivar is derived from the synthesis of the words cultivated and variety.
The term cultivar also comes from the Latin varietas culta, and was officially adopted by the XIII Horticulture Congress held in London in 1952. The nomenclature conventions are regulated by the International Code for the nomenclature of cultivated plants (CINPC) and the application of legislation and conventions is entrusted to specific international or national bodies.
The term cultivar is used indiscriminately for improved or local varieties, as long as they are grown.
This term finds more widespread application in plants propagated vegetatively.
The term cultivar is often abbreviated to cv., According to the International Code for the nomenclature of cultivated plants, and in general it is the term with which in agronomy is meant a variety of cultivated plant, obtained with genetic improvement, which summarizes a whole of specific morphological, physiological, agronomic and product characteristics of particular interest and transmissible with propagation, both by seed and by parts of the plant. From a practical point of view, the cultivar would be analogous to the breed of an animal species made with domestication and selection.

With the cultivar it is therefore identified in a particular genotype, artificially isolated with mass selection or individual selection, whose characteristics are fixed and repeatable with gamic propagation for at least 3-4 generations.
In the common agronomic language, however, the term “variety” is often used, but improperly, as a synonym of cultivar. However, the use is improper since the term variety must be reserved exclusively to the botanical meaning of the term and therefore refers to a particular genetic type which, within a species, spontaneously selected and propagated itself constituting a population (species wild). In general, the set of cultivars of an agricultural species is identified with a botanical variety, although this correlation is not formally and rigorously defined.
However, the generic use of the term cultivar often refers informally to the set of commercial genetic types of an agricultural species and therefore includes by extension the cultivar proper, commercial hybrids and ecotypes.
Finally, in fruit growing, the term cultivar is informally reserved exclusively for the genetic types used as grafts, while for rootstocks the terms “selection” or “clone” are generally used. The varieties of olive tree for olive oil production are cultivars.