Abstract:Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphisms(AFLP) analysis was employed to reveal the genetic diversity of Dioscorea alata Linn.. 111 germplasm, collected from six different provinces of China, were used with eight AFLP primer combinations that generated a total of 1291 fragments. A total of 1286 fragments showed polymorphism in the germplasm analyzed. A variety of marker attributes like polymorphism information content (PIC), marker index (MI) and resolving power (RP) values were calculated to assess the discriminatory power of eight primer combinations. The average values of PIC (0.22), MI(35.67), and RP (50.50) indicated great polymorphic and distinguishable ability of the eight AFLP primer combinations. The primer combination E-ACT/M-CTTE-AAC/CAG-M was be most informative with PIC, MI,and RP being 0.22, 35.67, 50.50, respectively. A total of 1286 fragments presented polymorphism which can be summaried as great divesity among 111 Dioscorea alata Linn. germplasm with extremely lower similiary (0.30 to 0.82 with average of 0.58) germplasm. At the genetic similarity coefficient level of 0.54, the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) phylogentic anlaysis further classified those gemplasm into four subcroups, and the germplasm 20, 42 and 47 were individually separated. The clustering results indicate no close relation to the geographic location of the germplasm.