Since the establishment of the Korean Society of Plant Taxonomists (KSPT) on Dec. 13, 1968, the professional manpower training and research activities have been analyzed. The survey method was based on the homepage of the KSPT and the Korean J. Pl. Ta...
Since the establishment of the Korean Society of Plant Taxonomists (KSPT) on Dec. 13, 1968, the professional manpower training and research activities have been analyzed. The survey method was based on the homepage of the KSPT and the Korean J. Pl. Taxon, and on data provided by each university about professional manpower. Over the past 50 years, a total of 680 specialists in plant taxonomy have been trained, consisting of 537 master's degree holders (274 males, 263 females) from 30 universities and 143 Ph.D.s (97 males, 46 females) from 26 universities, and the number has increased significantly since 1998. With regard to changes in the field of research over the last ten years, revision papers were the most common in the period of 1988–1997 (72%), but this rate has decreased to 51% over the last ten years, while the number of unrecorded papers has increased to 28%. In the 629 revision papers on taxa, 49% of the taxa belong to Asteraceae, Ranunculaceae, Cyperaceae, Liliaceae, Rosaceae, Fabaceae, Apiaceae, Lamiaceae, Orchidaceae, Oleaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Polygonaceae, and Amaryllidaceae. With regard to changes in research methods, the number of morphological papers increased from 6% to 51%, while pollen papers have decreased from a rate of 20% to only 2%. Chromosome studies account for 3–4%, chemotaxonomic studies 2%, and DNA studies remain low at 3–16%. The percentage of papers in English now stands at 43%, mainly due to the increased number of papers on unrecorded species.