Population genetics on Ambrosia genus: past, present and future

National audience; A new Task Force within the COST-SMARTER has recently been created. This group is composed of population genetics experts from five European countries in charge of focusing on “Genetics on Ambrosia” (Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden). Their mission was to review molecular methods used in published genetics studies on common ragweed and to discuss about future projects. Two different types of molecular markers are generally used in the literature to investigate the genetic structure within and between introduced and/or native populations of common ragweed: microsatellite markers and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP). These methods permit the researcher…