The chloroplast genomes for species of eight genera (Acorus, Amborella, Canna, Ceratophyllum, Cymbidum, Helianthus, Magnolia, and Nelumbo) and for subspecies of Fragaria vesca, Gossypium herbaceum, Olea europaea, and Oryza sativa were compared to 130 primer pairs published by Shaw et al. (2005, 2007), Scarcelli et al. (2011), Dong et al. (2012), and those designed here.
If a mismatch was detected in the last five bases at the 3' end of the primer, the mismatch was inferred to be fatal (IDT 2009). If more than three mismatches were detected within any given primer, amplification was inferred to be unsuccessful. These criteria are arbitrary but have worked for me personally and are probably more strict than necessary.
The excel spread sheets below provides tables including the list of regions examined, amplification success predictions, information on the fastest evolving regions (by taxon), and taxon specific details. [Caution: these sheets include calculations. Do not edit the cells]