Fragments of botanical material can often be found at crime scenes (on live and dead bodies, or on incriminating objects) and can provide circumstantial evidence on various aspects of forensic investigations such as determining crime scene locations, times of death or possession of illegal species. Morphological and genetic analysis are the most commonly applied methods to analyze plant fragment evidence but are limited by their low capacity to differentiate between potential source locations, especially at local scales. Here, we review the current applications and limitations of current plant fragment analysis for forensic investigations and introduce the potential of microbiome analysis to complement the existing forensic plant fragment analysis toolkit. The potential for plant fragment provenance identification at geographic scales meaningful to forensic investigations warrants further investigation of the phyllosphere microbiome in this context. To that end we identify three key areas of future research: 1) Retrieval of microbial DNA of sufficient quality and quantity from botanical material; 2) Variability of the phyllosphere microbiome at different taxonomic and spatial scales, with explicit reference to assignment capacity; 3) Impacts on assignment capacity of time, seasonality and movement of fragments between locations. The development of robust microbiome analysis tools for forensic purposes in botanical material could increase the evidentiary value of the botanical evidence commonly encountered in casework, aiding in the identification of crime scene locations.

植物材料的碎片通常可以在犯罪现场（在活体或尸体上或在犯罪物体上）发现，并且可以为法医调查的各个方面提供间接证据，例如确定犯罪现场的位置，死亡时间或拥有非法物种。形态学和遗传学分析是分析植物碎片证据的最常用方法，但由于它们区分潜在来源位置的能力低而受到限制，特别是在本地范围内。在这里，我们回顾了用于法医调查的当前植物片段分析的当前应用和局限性，并介绍了微生物组分析的潜力，以补充现有的法医植物片段分析工具包。在对法医调查有意义的地理尺度上鉴定植物片段物产的潜力，需要在这种情况下进一步研究叶圈微生物组。为此，我们确定了未来研究的三个关键领域：1）从植物材料中检索到足够质量和数量的微生物DNA；2）不同分类和空间尺度下的叶圈微生物组的变异性，并明确提及分配能力；3）对时间，季节性和片段在位置之间移动的分配能力的影响。开发用于植物材料中法医目的的强大微生物组分析工具，可以提高案例研究中通常遇到的植物证据的证据价值，有助于确定犯罪现场的位置。