Aromatic rice is preferred by consumers all over the world due to its flavor and palatability. Although large number of them is available, little analysis of the genetic diversity has been done at molecularlevel so far. Twelve microsatellite primer pairs, one from each chromosome of rice were used for evaluating the genetic diversity of 38 traditional indigenous non-Basmati aromatic rice cultivars. A totalof 32 different reproducible bands were amplified of which 26 (81.25%) were polymorphic. The number of bands per primer ranged from one to six with an average of 2.6 bands per primer. Ten primers(83.3%) revealed polymorphism between cultivars. Polymorphism information content ranged between 0.00 to 0.83. A dendrogram based on cluster analysis by microsatellite polymorphism grouped all the 38aromatic rice genotypes into three major groups effectively differentiating the slender aromatic rice cultivars from the short bold and long bold aromatic cultivars. Interestingly, Katrani, medium slenderaromatic rice from Bihar had to be grouped separately being genotypically different from other cultivars. It could be concluded that microsatellite markers could efficiently identify indigenous non-Basmati aromatic rice genotypes which can help in genetic conservation management and support intellectual property protection
