Abstract:The aim was to explore the genetic background of tea (Camellia sinensis) germplasm for accelerate the breeding of new varieties, the agronomic traits of 19 tea germplasms were observed, and the genetic diversity were analyzed by using SSR markers. The results showed that the new lines 1001 (‘chunlv 2’), 1017 and 46-6 were extra early cultivars, which germination stage was earlier more than 10 days than that of control (‘Fudingdabai’). Except 1001 line (‘chunlv2’) was small tree, the others were shrubs. The leaf shape of most new cultivars was long ellipse, except that 1017, 1011 and 1012 were circular or nearly circular. A total of 231 alleles were amplified from 19 tea germplasms by 48 SSR primers, with an average of 4.8 alleles per SSR. The polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.14 to 0.85 with an average of 0.55. The PIC of 28 pairs of primers was more than 0.55, accounting for 58.33% to the total of primers. The cluster analysis indicated that 27 tea germplasms could be divided into 4 categories at the genetic distance of 0.32, the first category included lines 1009, ‘Huangmeigui’, ‘Huangdan’ and ‘Huangguanyin’; the second category had 16 lines, such as 1011, 1008, and 1014, etc; the third category had ‘Fudingdabai’, ‘Fuyun 6’, 1017, 1019 and 1015; and the fourth category had 1001 and ‘Zaochunhao’. Therefore, these provide germplasm resources for breeding of new tea varieties.