Genética da conservação de plantas da Amazônia: uma abordagem cienciométrica

Abstract

Keywords: The Amazon forest is one of the regions with the highest biodiversity index, with a large territorial and hydrographic extension distributed among nine South American countries, characteristics that make it one of the largest biomes with great ecological and economic relevance for Brazil and the world. Within its biodiversity, the species that present socioeconomic and cultural importance for the inhabitants of the Northern region of Brazil stand out. Among these, the açaí (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) and the Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa, Humn. & Bonpl.), among others, which are responsible for about 45 million tons of fruits produced annually, generating about 49.8 billion reais per year. Consequently, its relevance encourages the extraction of these natural resources, also enabling the loss of genetic diversity of these species. The genetics of conservation, in turn, is an area of knowledge that is dedicated to the understanding of the genetic variability of living beings, and can be applied in the study of plants. These researches can be carried out through the use of molecular markers, which are quantitative and qualitative indicators on the genetic aspects, levels of genetic diversity of the populations and help in pointing out the conservation status of these species. Thus enabling the development of in situ and ex situ conservation techniques, for example, avoiding the early extinction of populations, such as those comprising Amazonian species. Still, scientometrics is a branch of scientific knowledge that makes use of quantitative statistical analysis of data productions that demonstrate the state of the art in a given area of knowledge. Thus, knowing the relevance of conservation genetics studies, scientometrics is promising to demonstrate and infer the main characteristics of the studies developed on the genetics of conservation of Amazonian plant species, and these arguments support the scope of this work.