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. With the development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based techniques, in particular, numerous molecular technologies have been, and still are being, developed, which can be used for the detection, characterization, and evaluation of genetic diversity in plant populations. These techniques can be chosen on the basis of how they display genetic differences, the type of data which they produce, the taxonomic levels at which they can be most appropriately applied, and their technical and financial.
