Plant DNA Barcoding and Phylogenetics

Taxonomy, the science of naming and classifying organisms is the original bioinformatics and a basis for all biology, is fundamentally important in ensuring the quality of life of future human generation on the earth; yet over the past few decades, the teaching interest and research funding in taxonomy have declined. Now taxonomy suddenly became fashionable again due to revolutionary approaches in taxonomy called DNA barcoding. The plant DNA barcoding is now transitioning the epitome of species identification; and thus, ultimately helping in the molecularization of taxonomy, a need of the hour. The DNA barcodes show promise in providing a practical, standardized, species-level identification tool that can be used for biodiversity assessment, life history and ecological studies, and forensic analysis. The most significant scientific information available on plant DNA barcoding technologies have been collected and arranged in order of the different marker systems which describes introductory and application review on plant DNA barcoding and phylogenetics under 18 chapters.