An Expert System in Plant Taxonomy

Abstract

Plant Taxonomy, a sub-field of Botany, is concerned with classification of plants. At present, there is a shortage of well-qualified experts in this field. The Expert System in Plant Taxonomy is to he used as an educational tool in classification of plants according to Hsuan Keng as well as a source of reference in order to alleviate workload of experts in the field.

This paper describes an application of Expert System in Plant Taxonomy. Knowledge elicitation was done by extracting from textbooks as well as consulting real experts. Rules and frames were selected as techniques for knowledge representation, while forward chaining and backward chaining were adopted for inferring mechanism. Intended users of the system include both novices as well as experts in the field.

Analysis in plant taxonomy is made on the basis that information given is correct as well as monotonic. This characteristic makes it suitable for the application of expert systems. This work also affirms that consultation with experts is crucial during knowledge elicitation, especially when knowledge is extracted from several sources or where experts adopt different approaches in their practice.

Keywords :Forward Chaining / Backward Chaining / Rules / Frames / Plant Taxonomy /Expert Systems / Phamacognosy / Hsuan Keng /