Abstract
Twenty one microsatellites (genomic & genic) markers were used to evaluate genetic diversity and DNA fingerprinting of 15 popular tea accessions.Each accession had a unique marker profile, indicating that microsatellite markers were useful in differentiation studies among the tea collections.A total of 127 polymorphic alleles were scored with an allele frequency of 6.05 per primer.The polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.2 (CamsinM1) to 0.60 (TUGMS12), with an average of 0.359.SSR markers analysis detected a high level of heterozygosity (av Ho 0.775; He 0.847) in tea.The Jaccard's similarity coefficients ranged from 0.15 to 0.56 with an average similarity index (ASI) of 0.234.The first two coordinate explained 54.33% of the total variance.The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrogram and the PCoA (Principle coordinate analysis) indicated that the populations formed two major groups with exclusive China and China hybrids (I) and Assam types (II).The collections from western Himalayan possessed a moderate to high level of genetic diversity which could provide valid guidelines for genetic improvement of tea