Abstract: The method for establishing core collection of Pleurotus ostreatus cultivated in China based on the molecular markers data was proposed. For 11 SSR makers of 48 P. ostreatus cultivars，an allele preferred sampling strategy was used to establish P. ostreatus core collection using UPGMA cluster method according to the genetic distances and the phenotypic traits. The size of each core collection was determined when the ratio of SSR alleles retained was maintained at 100%，95%，90%，85% and 80% respectively. The ratio of SSR rare alleles retained and t-test of Nei’s gene diversity and Shannon’s information index were used to evaluate representativeness of the core collections. This was followed by analyses of the phenotypic representativeness of the core collections，including the coincidence rates of range，mean，and standard deviation between the core collections. Our analyses identified that the allele preferred sampling strategy could be used to establish the most representative core collection with the least

Key words: Pleurotus ostreatus, core collection, sampling method, molecular makers, phenotype, genetic diversity