Plant cytotaxonomy was developed in Europe and W. America, accumulating data and establishing evolutionary models based mainly on temperate taxa and floras. The introduction of more refined cytogenetic techniques has allowed an improved analysis of the karyotypic variability, but these new methods have been applied only to a very small number of taxa. Consequently, the main focus of the cytotaxonomy is still the chromosome number. Chromosomal data for tropical species are still very scarce, especially those from the American tropics. In Brazil, cytotaxonomy has been developed as an adjunct of cytogenetics rather than as a taxonomic approach. However, in the recent years these has been an increase in the number of laboratories working on plant cytogenetics and many advances in cy to taxonomic studies on representatives of our flora have been made.
Cytotaxonomy; Cytogenetics; Cytotaxonomy in Brazil