Abstract: Genetic diversity and genetic structure of 139 individuals from seven wild populations of Osmanthus fragrans in four provinces of China were studied with nuclear microsatellite（nSSR）markers. A relatively high level of genetic diversity was detected in O. fragrans with 11 polymorphic microsatellite loci. Average Allelic diversity（A），effective number of alleles（Ne）and mean expected heterozygosity（He）were 6.039，3.769 and 0.673，respectively. All populations deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium significantly，with inbreeding coefficient（FIS）ranging from 0.313 to 0.580. Genetic differentiation among population was moderately low（FST = 0.143）. Mantel test showed no significant correlation between genetic and geographic distances among populations（r =–0.277，P = 0.214）. Bayesian STRUCTURE clustering analysis suggested that there were three logic populations for all individuals. Bottleneck analysis revealed that all populations except for LY had experienced recent decline in population sizes.

Key words: Osmanthus fragrans, nuclear microsatellite（nSSR）markers, genetic diversity, geneticstructure