Abstract: Strong justifications have been developed for why woody plants should be viewed as mod-el systems in plant biology. The genus Populus possesses many characteristics that are conductive to functional genomic studies，and therefore leads to its emergence as a model system in extrapolating findings in perennial plant species that are different from annual herbaceous plants. With the pro-ceeding of the whole genome sequencing，poplars will be act as a wide reference for functional ge-nomics studies in perennial plant species and will also contribute towards answering some fundamen-tal scientific questions. This paper reviewed the history and progress of the poplar genome studies and the potential keen topics in the future. The contents mainly address on: （1）the somatic genet-ics studies in Populus;（2）the genomics studies carried out in Populus，including genetic map-ping，genome sequ encing，physical map construction，microarray analysis and linkage disequilibri-um analysis;（3）the potential application of the genome information of Populus for facilitating our understanding of some basic scientific questions.

Key words: Genome, perennial plant, model system.