Abstract: EST-SSR markers of Malus pumila Mill. were selected to investigate the genetic diversity of germplasm resources in 33 cultivars of Chaenomeles,and hence to confirm the transferability of SSRs information from Malus to Chaenomeles. In this study,15 selected primers were employed for PCR amplification and 9 primers presented polymorphic bands;71 bands were generated by all EST-SSR,of which 59（83.10%）were polymorphic;the different cultivars listed here were successfully distinguished. The average of polymorphic information content（PIC）were 0.45. The average of Shannon index（I） and Nei’s genetic diversity index（H）were 0.71 and 0.45. UPGMA cluster based on the EST-SSR data,the materials were divided into 5 groups. Different samples of Chaenomeles were gathered together and could be distinguished by system tree. The results showed that EST-SSR markers developed from M. pumila showed high transferability to Chaenomeles,and they may be used in germplasm evaluation and genetic relationship for Chaenomeles.

Key words: EST-SSR, Chaenomeles, transferability