The knowledge on genetic variability and the relationship among different Barbados cherry accesses is important to maximize the resources for the future genetic breeding. The objective of this work was to determine the genetic variability among 48 accessions of Barbados cherry evaluated using RAPD as DNA markers and morpho-agronomical characteristics. It was used 25 primers, making it possible to obtain 108 markers and to generate 92 different polymorphic products. The obtained markers were of analyzed by the method of Tocher and UPGMA what generated a dendrogram using the Jaccard index. There was a concordance among the studied methods with the formation of 14 groups. The accessions ACE 023 and ACE 033 were the most distinct, presenting a genetic dissimilarity of 0.58. The results allowed to us to conclude that RAPD marker associated with morpho-agronomical characteristics were efficient to discriminate the genetic relationship among the accessions of Barbados cherry and the divergent accessions should be useful in the use of genetic breeding and six of them were recommended for future clonal evaluation as varieties and clonal propagation.
polymorphic; acid ascorbic content; genetic variability
