In recent years, timber smuggling are increased in both scale and area, become a major cause not only threaten the survival of species but also dangerous to national security and people safety because many trees in protection forest are cut down illegally. 32/2006-CP Government decree issued regulations protecting endangered species. However, because of highly economic values, many timbers are still being over-exploited and traded illegally. Moreover, with favorable geographical location, Viet Nam has become a hot point in the exchange, illegal timber trade between countries in the Asian as well as in the world. Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR) is scientific authority organization for CITES Vietnam since 1994
when Vietnam has participated in CITES with the main function is giving advices for CITES Management Authority of Vietnam to built policies and law enforcement, which relate to wild life trading IEBR is the key agency in the assessment and investigation of trading in wild life. However, currently, Vietnam have difficulties in morphological identification of plant specimens in the form of dry wood because normally, trading timber are treated with chemical or physical and their characteristics will be changed compare with fresh form. Thus, the authors are trying to apply molecular biology techniques in to timber classification. The first important step that decide the success of the classification using bio-technology is DNA extraction from timber. There are 3 protocols of DNA extraction were conducted. The results showed that, the protocol for DNA extraction using CTAS that improved by department of Molecular systematics and Conservation genetics (IEBR) has the best result.