Abstract:The genetic relationships among 38 genotypes of beer barley from China were investigated by RAPD.The results showed that 28 arbitrary primers produced 153 distinctive bands in total and 91 of them were found to be polymorphic,which accounted for 59.4%.Each primer could amplify 1 to 8 polymorphic bands with an average of 3.3 bands.Cluster analysis showed that 38 beer barley could be classified into 2 groups at the level of GD 0.27,which were respectively classified into 5 subgroups again.The GD varied from 0.00952 to 0.37846. Most beer barley had showed certain regular distribution in every subgroup.The results indicated that the genetic basis of them was rather narrow.