Abstract: SSR molecular marker were used to analyze the genetic polymorphism of tea germplasm．These 37 pairs of primer were amplified with 43 tea cultivars, and their PCR products were visualized by 8% native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The polymorphic alleles were visualized from the PCR products amplified by 34 pairs of primer out of 37. The number of bands per primer pair ranged from 1 to 11 and the SSR fragment size of different SSR locus ranged from 150 to 350 bp. Based on the SSR results, the genetic distance and similarity coefficient were calculated using the Nei & Lei’s coefficient method by DPS software. The results showed that the coefficient genetic distance among 43 accessions ranged from 0.059 to 0.820 indicating the gene differentiation was very remarkable among tested cultivars. Based on the genetic distance and the UPGMA cluster, all the 43 accessions were clustered to 7 groups at the average genetic distance level.

Key words: tea plant [Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze], SSR, genetic diversity