Abstract:The fingerprinting and genetic diversity of 14 tigernut accessions collected from different geographical regions were investigated with SRAP molecular markers. The results showed that 306 polymorphic bands were detected among the tested accessions, with an average of 8.1 bands per primer. Twelve accessions had unique bands by 28 primer pairs, which could be identified with one pair of specific primer expect No 4 and No 14. All 14 accessions could be distinguished by two primer combinations (Me2/Em6 and Me8/Em11) at least, and digital fingerprinting code was also established. Clustering with UPGMA method revealed that the genetic distance ranged from 0.09 to 0.72 with an average of 0.37, which indicated that there was abundant genetic diversity among all 14 accessions.