**Meet the editors**

Dr. Oscar Grillo was born in Catania (Sicily) in 1977, he is a food technologist with an international PhD in applied and environmental botany. Since 2003 he has been working as researcher at the Stazione Sperimentale di Granicoltura per la Sicilia, a governmental institute of agronomic research, mainly working with computer vision applied to food matrices and plant structures, above

all seeds, and in particular studying wheat and the related leguminous. Currently, he is working also at the Sardinian Germplasm Bank of the Biodiversity Conservation Centre of the University of Cagliari on projects devoted to seed characterization and identification by image analysis. Results of his work have been published in many peer-reviewed journals papers and international conference papers. Referee for a few peer-reviewed journals, many times he has been invited as teacher/lecturer/speaker by some universities and research centres in Spain and Italy. He has trained many MSc and PhD students, who have made their own contributions to the agronomical and botanical research.

Dr. Gianfranco Venora is a biologist, born in Caltagirone (Sicily) in 1958, where he lives and works. He took his University degree in 1981, and since 1982 he has been working as researcher at the Stazione Sperimentale di Granicoltura per la Sicilia. His working expertise is mainly about durum wheat and leguminous breeding. At the beginning of 1990, after some years of experience

on karyotyping cropped and wild species of agronomical importance, he was fascinated by computer vision applied to food matrices and plant structures, above all seeds, studying wheat and the related leguminous. He was recently nominated as professor to the research doctorate on Applied and Environmental Botany of the University of Cagliari. Many peer-reviewed journals published his papers and he was invited as speaker in many international conferences, and as teacher/lecturer by some universities and research centres in Germany, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Spain, Czech Republic and Italy. Gianfranco Venora is currently referee for about 15 peer-reviewed journals and tutor of many MSc and PhD students.

Contents

**Preface IX** 

Chapter 3 **Olive (***Olea Europaea* **L***.***):** 

Chapter 4 **Systematic Diversity of** 

Chapter 1 **Biodiversity and Evolution in the** *Vanilla* **Genus 1** 

**Genome Dynamism, Population Processes** 

A. Blanco, A. Pasqualone and C. Montemurro

**the Family Poaceae (Gramineae) in Chile 71** 

Chapter 5 **Arboreal Diversity of the Atlantic Forest of Southern Brazil: From the Beach Ridges to the Paraná River 109**  Maurício Bergamini Scheer and Christopher Thomas Blum

**Gradient in a Cloud Forest in Chiapas, Southern Mexico 135** 

Rubén Martínez-Camilo, Nayely Martínez-Meléndez, Sergio López,

**Assessing Vegetation Using (Dis) Similarity Measures 147** 

**Southern-Italian Biodiversity Assessment and Traceability of Processed Products by Means of Molecular Markers 53**  V. Alba, W. Sabetta, C. Summo, F. Caponio, R. Simeone,

Gigant Rodolphe, Bory Séverine, Grisoni Michel and Besse Pascale

**and Phylogenetic Patterns 27**  A. Dewitte, A.D. Twyford, D.C. Thomas, C.A. Kidner and J. Van Huylenbroeck

Víctor L. Finot, Juan A. Barrera,

Chapter 7 **Spatial Patterns of Phytodiversity -** 

A. Jentsch and S. Sudhakar

Clodomiro Marticorena and Gloria Rojas

Chapter 6 **Structure and Floristic Composition in a Successional** 

Miguel Ángel Pérez-Farrera, César Tejeda-Cruz,

S. Babar, A. Giriraj, C. S. Reddy, G. Jurasinski,

Eduardo Espinoza-Medinilla and Tamara Rioja-Paradela

Chapter 2 **The Origin of Diversity in** *Begonia***:** 
