is notable that there was already a wealth of commentaries on
the subject from the earliest studies, which illustrates the great
controversy with regard to the prospects, the difficulties and
the credibility of the results presented.
A more extensive literature search on aDNA studies in plants,
excluding reviews and comments, yielded a total of 57 references.
Almost half of the studies deal with cultivated taxa (Fig. 2a).
Wild plant species have also been targeted, including a few
extinct taxa. Finally, a suite of plant secondary products have
been studied in the frame of forensics, archaeology or even for
industrial purposes. Regardless of the type of species/material
investigated, the main objectives have included species
identification, phylogenetic assignment, and intraspecific
diversity (Fig. 2b). It should be noted, however, that intraspecific