Q. What do you mean by Cytotaxonomu and biosustematics?
Towards the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, botanists were faced with a problem of analysing variations occurring naturally in plants. This led to a shift in the emphasis from descriptive classical methods in plant taxonomy to a new approach called experimental taxonomy whereby attempts were made to understand the cause of these variations. This new approach, also called biosystematics, depended largely on establishing the cytological basis of variation. This use of cytological data in taxonomy is now referred to as cytotaxonomy. For the purposes of discussion, this trend in plant taxonomy may be considered under three broad headings:
i) chromosome number,
ii) chromosome morphulogy, and
iii) chromosome behaviour at meiosis.