The study of the Musaceae, excitingly complex in the late 1800s, profited well from the taxo-morphologic inventory system developed b British scientists in a twenty year effort to coherently classify wild type species and cultivars. This system still holds true under the analytic fire of the actual, modern, molecular markers. These markers are best known under their acronyms : AFLP, CAPS, RAPD, RFLP, SCAR, SSR, VNTR to name the most described ones. The present communication is an overview on molecular markers as applied to Musa genetic diversity studies and mapping at CIRAD from 1987 to 1997. Marker systems from polyphenols and isozymes to microsatellites, as well a SINE and LINE-like repetitive elements, will be discussed. Especially aspects of transferability in order to foster cooperation and exchange between "biotechnology centers" and "biodiversity centers" worlwide will be mentioned. On focus will be on RFLP and microsatellite genetic diversity studies, based on the nucleic, mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes. The molecular data will soon be accessible over the Internet in TROPGENE-DB (a molecular biology database on tropical crops at CIRAD of the ACeDB algorithm family).