Grain sorghum is the fifth most important crop grown in the world for either a major food crop or animal feed. It is important to identify the genetic diversity of sorghum genetic resources for cultivar development and evaluation of sorghum accessions in Korea. Two hundred thirty six SSR primer sets, which are evely distributed across the sorghum genome, were used to assess the genetic variation of 23 sorghum accessions with a US cultivar, BTx623. Results showed that SSR markers were highly polymorphic among the sorghum collections and the average alleles per locus were 3.15 with the average of 0.436 PIC (polymorphism information content) values. The sorghum accessions in this study were unequally separated and were clustered into 4 groups. The results showed that there was a sufficient SSR polymorphism with SSR primers used among Korean sorghum accessions, and the development of genetic map and marker-assisted selection for cultivated sorghum would be feasible with further studies.

• JY Park(Institute of Ecological Phytochemistry, School of Plant and Envrionmental Science, Hankyong National Univ.)
• AR Kim(Institute of Ecological Phytochemistry, School of Plant and Envrionmental Science, Hankyong National Univ.)
• SY Yoo(Institute of Ecological Phytochemistry, School of Plant and Envrionmental Science, Hankyong National Univ.)
• JI Kim(Rural Development Administration, National Institute of Crop Science, Dept. of Functional Crop)
• TW Jung(Rural Development Administration, National Institute of Crop Science, Dept. of Functional Crop)
• SH Woo(Dept. of Crop Science, Chungbuk National Univ.)
• HY Heo(Dept. of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, Montana State Univ., USA)
• TW Kim(Institute of Ecological Phytochemistry, School of Plant and Envrionmental Science, Hankyong National Univ.)
• TS Ko(Institute of Ecological Phytochemistry, School of Plant and Envrionmental Science, Hankyong National Univ.) Corresponding Author