Objective: To breed good varieties of Desmodium styracifolium. Method: Seeds of D. styracifolium were treated with chemical mutagens

including sodium azide (NaN3)

ethyl methyl sulfone (EMS) and colchicine. SRAP markers were used to conduct DNA molecular identification for the variants of D. styracifolium and the control plants. Result: There were a lot of macroscopic variations in plant height

basal diameter and branch numbers of D. styracifolium. A total of 3 285 DNA bands were amplified from 10 pairs of primers

and the percentage of polymorphic bands was 96.45%. The genetic similarity coefficients of the variants ranged from 0.326 to 0.476

which were relatively low. This indicated true genetic differences between mutants and control materials of D. styracifolium. The degree of similarity differences from high to low was as follows: V-13> V-7> V-6> V-11> V-10> V-12> V-9> V-8> V-4> V-5> V-3> V-2> V-1.The molecular level effect of NaN3 on D. styracifolium was smaller than that of EMS and colchicine. After chemical mutagenesis

D. styracifolium showed a higher degree of morphological variation than varieties from other provenance. The results indicated that the artificially induced mutation breeding could shorten the breeding period and improve the mutation rate. Conclusion: The study clearly defines the phenotypic specificity and genetic diversity of D. styracifolium germplasms

and screened out some specific resources

in order to provide the important scientific basis for breeding high-yield and high-quality varieties of D. styracifolium.