Research Advances and Perspectives of Conservation Genomics of Endangered Plants

Understanding in the evolutionary processes, endangered mechanisms, and adaptive evolution history are key scientific issues in conservation biology. During the past decades, advances in high-throughput sequencing and multi-disciplinary crossover have triggered the development of conservation genomics, which refers to the use of new genomic technologies and genomic information in solving the existing problems in conservation biology. Conservation genomics mainly focuses on the endangered mechanism and conservation strategies aiming at protection of survivability and diversity of endangered species. Application of conservation genomics into the study of endanger plant species has provided innovated protection concept for biologists and promoted the development of population-based conservation strategies. This chapter summarizes the studies of population genomics for agronomically and commercially important plants threatened and endangered, discusses the advantages of conservation genomics for the analysis of genetic diversity, inferences about the history of population dynamics, evaluation of natural forces on wild plant populations, and the establishment of effective conservation strategies. This chapter also presents the development trends in genomics for the conservation of endangered plant species.