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The book is about biodiversity, to develop a reliable tool for an authentic identification and classification of wild Rosa species. The research was conducted partly at Uni. of Agri., Faisalabad, Pakistan and partly at Uni. of Wales, Bangor, U.K. Roses were collected, from five different sites in northern areas of Pakistan and 8 Rosa species were collected from nurseries in the U.K. On the basis of 18 morphological characters a dendrogram was developed. RAPD technique was optimized for Rosa species and again a dendrogram was developed to study diversity among the species. The plants from Pakistan belonged to two species (Rosa webbiana & Rosa brunonii). Dendrogram based on the morphological characters showed that R. webbiana and R. brunonii were most similar and R. foetida and R. macrophylla were the most dissimilar species. Morphologically R. pimpinellifolia was different from R. brunonii, though the species were quite close on the basis of RAPD. R. foetida was most different species based on RAPD. The diversity between Rosa species seem to be real ones as were confirmed by both the DNA based markers and morphological studies.

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Dr. Atif Riaz is Asst. Professor on Tenure Track in the Institute of Horticultural Sciences, Uni. of Agri., Faisalabad, Pakistan. His Ph.D. Thesis on BIODIVERSITY IN ROSA SPECIES. is based on research conducted at Uni. of Agri., Faisalabad, Pakistan and Uni. of Wales, Bangor, U.K. which was supported through a Commonwealth Scholarship.

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