Species Richness in Relation to the Presence of Crop Plants in Families of Higher Plants

Crop species richness and percentages of cultivated plants in 75 families comprisingmore than 220000 species were analyzed. Three major groups have been made. The first group is including the “big five” families with 10000 and more species in each. The second group comprises 50 families with more than thousand and up to 10000 species and finally the third group contains families with relatively high numbers of crop species. The percentage of cultivated species is various, from 0.16 to 7.25 in group 1, 0 to 7.24 in group 2 and 2.30 to 32.5 in group 3. The results show that there is a positive correlation (r = + 0.56) between number of crop plants and species diversity of the families.