Abstract: The population variation and structure of 115 plants representing 8 populations of Quercus senescens Hand.Mazz. were investigated by amplification fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis.Using TFPGA software,94 polymorphic phenotypic patterns (752%) was obtained using 2 AFLP primer combinations and it was found that genetic variation of different population was negatively correlated with altitudes.Analysis of the genetic structure of populations carried out using analysis of molecular variation (by Arliquin 2000 software),It showed that there was a high significant population differentiation (φst=02956).And neighbourjoining dendragram also be constructed based on 2 primer combinations by PAUP software.

Key words: Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204, China；Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China