Mark Chase There are many literature resources available to molecular biologists wishing to assess genetic variation, but the myriad of techniques and approaches potentially available to the plant breeder and the evolutionary biologist is truly bewildering, and most have never been evaluated side-by-side on the same sets of samples. Additionally, it is often not recognized that tools that are useful for breeders can often be adapted for use in evolutionary studies and vice versa, but this is generally the case. The borderline between population genetics and phylogenetics is vague and...

The conservation of natural genetic variation is important not only for ethical and aesthetic reasons but to ensure that the Earth's living resources may be used even more efficiently and sustainably in agriculture, forestry, food production and other industries. In the past ten years there have been many advances in molecular biology that have provided a suite of powerful tools with enormous potential for the screening and evaluation of biodiversity. Molecular Tools for Screening Biodiversity was compiled in order to provide a comprehensive description and assessment of these tools. The book...