Abstract：Auricularia heimuer is an important and widely cultivated edible fungus in China, and the morphological development and genetic breeding were concerned by researchers. It has brought a lot of inconvenience in breeding, because of introduction and serious synonymy phenomenon. A molecular ID system based on SSR markers for identifying and differentiating of germplasm resource, and it is important to identify and protect the germplasm resources of edible fungi. In this study, SSR markers were employed to clarify the genetic diversity and to establish the SSR ID of 72 accessions of A. heimuer collected from different areas in China, which contain cultivated and wild species. Eight SSR primer pairs were selected from a pool of 65 primer pairs, the cluster results were analysed by the method of UPGMA (unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic means). The results showed that the genetic similarity coefficient were 0.37~1.00, at the 0.56, the tested strains could be divided into 3 groups. The following groups of strains are the synonyms. Au1 to Au11 is series of Hei Shan, Au44 and Au90, Au40 and Au73, Au22 and Au60. They have a close relationship. Based on the results of the UPGMA cluster analysis, amplification patterns SSR molecular ID system, the molecular identities for the resource protection and new varieties of A. heimuer can be construct. The results provide a basis for identification and protection of edible fungi germplasm resources.
