“…It has also been important to conserve the natural genetic resources and the within-population genetic diversity against potential depletion or contamination through overcutting or plantation practices. Highly polymorphic microsatellite (simple sequence repeat; SSR) markers have enhanced molecular studies of Japanese conifer species, in particular, genotypic discrimination of clones (e.g., HIRAO et al, 2006), gene flow in seed orchards and natural populations (e.g., MORIGUCHI et al, 2005;GOTO et al, 2005;IWAIZUMI et al, 2007;LIAN et al, 2008), and inter-population genetic structure (e.g., TAKAHASHI et al, 2005).…”