Assessment of Plant Genetic Diversity

Dear Colleagues,

Convention on the Biological Diversity and the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy define biodiversity as the variety of life and its processes. Biodiversity is generally recognized on three levels:
· Genetic diversity - the variety of genetic building blocks found among individual representatives of a species;
· Species diversity – the variety of living organisms found in a particular place;
· Ecosystem diversity - the variety of species and ecological functions and processes, both their kind and number, that occur in different physical settings.

In this Diversity’s special issue we focus on the first level “genetic diversity” restricting it to the Plant aspects since the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources are essential to the sustainable development of agricultural production. Plant genetic resources comprise the diversity of genetic material contained in traditional varieties and modern cultivars, as well as crop wild relatives and other wild plant species that can be used, now or in the future, for food and agriculture, including resources which contribute to people’s livelihoods by providing food, medicine, feed for domestic animals, fibre, clothing, shelter, energy and a multiple of other products and services.

In this special issue will be published contributions assessing the genetic diversity in Plant species as well as contributions focusing on the aspect connected with this such as statistical methods and tools used.

Mario A. Pagnotta
Guest Editor

Related Journal

• Genes - an Open Access journal of genetics and genomics.