Status of biodiversity in bamboos of India

Diverse plant genetic resources are valuable assets for humanity that must not be lost. Such materials will be increasingly necessary in the future to feed a burgeoning global population. The wise use and conservation of bamboo resources can provide more benefits to people all over the world. The presence of genetic variability in plants is required for further improvement, conservation, and so on. This can be accomplished through PGR phenotyping and molecular characterization. With high throughput molecular marker technologies ensuring the speed and quality of data generated, it is now possible to characterize a larger number of germplasm with limited time and resources. Because bamboo is such a large genus, taxonomic delineation of species and subspecies is still contentious and needs to be addressed more rigorously. Attempts have been made to classify the genus using morphological, biochemical, and molecular markers, but more data is needed to confirm the phylogeny and taxonomy of the genus.