In a plugin, what's the way in PHP to output a CSRF token?
Maybe try craft()-&gt;request-&gt;getCsrfToken(), see if that does it?

Edit

Sorry, misunderstood the question, since you are saying your plugin has a CP section then i'm assuming you're actually looking for a twig way to output the CSRF input, not so much a PHP way. To output the CRSF input in your template simply do {{ getCsrfInput() }}