| Summary: | Premise of the study: We developed nuclear simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers for the characterization of the biomass crop <i>Miscanthus</i>, especially <i>M. sacchariflorus</i>, <i>M. sinensis</i>, and <i>M. ×giganteus</i>, and tested for cross-species amplification.
Methods and Results: Twenty-nine SSR markers (di- and tetranucleotide repeats) were developed from DNA sequences obtained from 192 clones from an enriched genomic library of <i>M. sinensis</i>. All markers were successfully amplified in <i>M. sacchariflorus</i>, <i>M. sinensis</i>, and <i>M. ×giganteus</i>, and 19 amplified across a broad range of <i>Miscanthus</i> species. Polymorphism information content and expected heterozygosity values (19 locus sample) were 0.88 and 0.89, respectively, for <i>M. sinensis</i>, 0.48 and 0.54 for <i>M. sacchariflorus</i>, and were the lowest in <i>M. ×giganteus</i> (0.33, 0.41). Thirteen out of 19 primer pairs showed cross-species amplification in non-<i>Miscanthus</i> sensu stricto taxa.
Conclusions: The new set of 29 SSR markers will be of high value for characterizing <i>Miscanthus</i> germplasm collections, for prebreeding, and for assessing variation in natural populations.
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