Advanced statistical analysis of Salvia exudates.

In a screening work Salvia exudates have shown to possess inhibitory activity on the germination of Papaver rhoeas L. and Avena sativa L.. A database for fast and efficient data collection among the various collaborating groups has been developed in order to define the allelopathic potential of these species. Data about the effect of 13 species of Salvia and a control species on Avena and Papaver has been extracted from the database and advanced statistical analysis have been done: first, correlation studies have been done, in order to consider only real significant data and to avoid duplicates. Then, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) clustering algorithm has been developed in order to group data in at most five clusters. 100 trials have been done to cluster data, in order to have unbiased results. The clustering results have been ranked by an following innovative index, to give a ranking of the effectiveness of every Salvia species.