Korea signed to the international union for the protection of new varieties of plants (UPOV) 2002, it has been increased that the importance of the rights protection for breeder. National institute of horticultural & herbal science (NIHHS) has been bred using crossing and tissue culture since 1992 and released nineteen new Phalaenopsis varieties from 2002 to 2011. This study was conducted to develop DNA markers for discrimination of the Phalaenopsis varieties bred in NIHHS, Korea. Also the genetic relationships among 14 Phalaenopsis varieties were analyzed using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Fifty five polymorphic bands (4.6 per primer) were generated by polymerase chain reaction with selected 12 primers among 111 primers. The dendrogram was constructed by using the UPGMA clustering algorithm based on genetic similarity. The Similarity values among the breeding Phalaenopsis cultivars ranged from 0.593 to 0.945. Fourteen Phalaenopsis cultivars were classified into three major groups at similarity coefficient value of 0.66. Understanding of the genetic diversity could be useful in Phalaenopsis breeding program. We could discriminate these breeding varieties using SSR 20 and SSR 21. These molecular markers could be utilized as a reliable tool for variety discrimination with morphological characterization in breeding Phalaenopsis.

Cymbidium hybrid “Bright Lemon” was released by National Horticultural Research Institute (NHRI) in 203.A cross was made in 1995 between Cymbidium “Miake Pieta”, a purple-pink colored petal and medium plant sized variety, and“Unknown”, a yellow petal with