Abstract:Abstract: Thirty six tea cultivars origin from Zhejiang province were analyzed using SSR markers. The genetic diversity and cluster analysis shown that: totally 121 alleles and 187 genotypes were amplified by 34 polymorphism markers, with an average of 3.5 and 5.5, respectively; the polymorphism information content (PIC) were ranged from 0.02 to 0.74, average 0.45; most similar cultivars were classified according to their genomic background. Ten core SSR markers fitting for cultivar identification were confirmed, and were used to evaluate 4 unknown varieties. It is believed that if more than 2 core primer pairs were different between 2 tea plants, they should be defined as different varieties; otherwise they are same variety or highly similarity varieties. If necessary, the value of genetic distance should be used to distinguish highly similarity varieties, if the value >0.140 they should be defined as different varieties, otherwise they are same variety. We believe that, this study will promote the breeding research of tea plant in Zhejiang province.