The genomic uses of a 200 year-old herbarium – Pitfalls and potentials

Abstract

Major herbaria, such as the one hosted by the botanical garden of Geneva (G) have played a central role in the development of plant systematics over the last 200 years. Today, advances in high throughput sequencing technologies (HTS) together with the development of targeted capture, where DNA extracts are enriched for preselected loci using hybridization probes prior to sequencing, have considerably improved the use of herbaria as a source of genetic data, opening new avenues in the study of plant biodiversity.