Description:

HPGRo (Historical Plant Genetic Resources ontology) is a CIDOC-CRM extension for the source-critical study of historical plant genetic resources, developed on 16th–20th-century pomological literature on Ribes (currants and gooseberries). It distinguishes three layers: a material/biological layer (individual plants, seeds, fertilization, clonal networks), a dispositional layer (the cultivar concept as a potential, asymptotically approached through its expressions), and a discursive layer of reified source statements. Each statement carries its own epistemic value and is kept distinct from its ontological placement, so that a historically true claim attached to the wrong cultivar can be recognised as such — guarding against the silent propagation of misattributions through the literature. Biological classes anchor to PO/GO and RO; cultural, documentary and provenance classes anchor to CIDOC-CRM; the dispositional layer is HPGRo's own extension. The model integrates genebank descriptors (MCPD) as a descriptor taxonomy, linking historical text encoding (TEI) to standard passport data.