Over the last few years there have been dramatic advances in plant molecular genetics and these developments have provided scientists involved in the conservation of plant genetic resources with a range of new techniques for their research. Nowadays techniques are available to analyze variations in the DNA level of plants and animals or other organisms. Differences in gene sequence can be directly observed and described - a degree of precision previously impossible to achieve. Many of the techniques that have been developed have already been used to study the extent and distribution of variation in species gene-pools and to investigate evolutionary and taxonomic relationships among plant populations
