Genetic Diversity Assessment and Molecular Markers in Bamboos

The bamboos belong to subfamily Bambusoideae, one of the twelve subfamilies of Poaceae. This subfamily is classified into three tribes: Arundinarieae or temperate woody bamboos, Bambusoideae or tropical woody bamboos and Olyreae or herbaceous bamboos. Traditionally, chloroplast (intergenic spacers and genes) and nuclear markers, mainly ITS and GBSSI are the most used markers to infer phylogenetic relationships among tribes, within subtribes and genus levels. Recently, methods for subsampling genomes, such as restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) have proven to be useful to resolve phylogenetic problems in temperate woody bamboos. Inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSRs) and simple-sequence repeats (SSRs) or microsatellites are the two molecular markers most used to evaluate the genetic diversity to species levels. Some species from Neotropical woody bamboo genus Guadua, Palaeotropical woody bamboo species of Dendrocalamus and temperate woody bamboo species of Fargesia, Kuruna, Phyllostachys and Sasa have been studied using those kinds of molecular markers with contrasting genetic patterns of diversity. Finally, amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLPs) are the less used molecular markers in woody bamboos. This chapter will describe examples using the molecular markers here mentioned and future directions about the phylogenetic and species level studies.