Abstract
A proper identification of clones is necessary in clonal forestry and will help to protect the legitimate interests of breeders, growers and industry. Twenty-four of the Eucalyptus clones most widely cultivated in China were analyzed using a set of 24 microsatellite markers to develop their DNA-based fingerprints and exploit the genetic variations. A total of 286 alleles were detected, averaging at 11.9 alleles per marker locus. All the microsatellites were polymorphic among the clones investigated. The observed heterozygosity (Ho) varied with locus between 0.500 and 1.000 with a mean of 0.885. The 24 clones could be uniquely fingerprinted based on their multilocus genotypes at a minimum of three loci (Embra169, Embra72 and Embra2). The dendrogram constructed from the genotypic similarity coefficients separated the 24 clones into three groups, matching essentially the historically known or speculated clonal origins. Clones T13, Guanglin-5 and Guanglin-9 turned out to be full siblings of cross DH32 while the DH201-2 sampled here appeared to be mislabelled.