Cluster analysis of plant microelement composition as a conceptual basis solving of some chemotaxonomy problems

УДК 582.751.2:582.32.998

Abstract

The species-specific chemical compounds are used solving problems of chemotaxonomy as markers. At the same time, the trace element status of a plant can also be species-specific because it determined by the plant genome. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effectiveness of cluster analysis method of microelement composition to the purposes of chemotaxonomy. The studied objects were above-ground generative shoots of the subfamily Boraginoideae plants. They were collected in the flowering phase in different years and in different places of growth. The studied species of family Boraginaceae were distributed into two tribes by made method of analysis, which is correlated with the division of these species into the tribes Boraginaea and Lithospermeae accepted in the APG system. In the analysis of the tribe Boragineae plants, it was shown that the analysis method used is invariant to the variability of individual species composition. Analysis of genus Pulmonaria species confirmed the invariance of the method with respect to the individual variability and shows that species of this genus can be combined into three clusters: 1 - P. mollis, 2 - P. angustifolia, 3 - P. officinalis, P. rubra and P obscura. The made the conceptual approach using of the microelement status by solving problems in chemotaxonomy makes it possible to create an analysis technique that, on the one hand, is resistant to individual variability of the microelement status of a particular species, and on the other hand, has a sufficient degree of information content depending on the phylogenetic position of the species