Using 10 selected Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) primers, to investigate the genetic diversity and relationships among ‘Nam Hom’ coconut grown in the western region of Thailand, resulting in amplification of 169 reproducible polymorphic fragment products out of 416 bands scored. The percentages of polymorphic markers for AFLP ranged from 70.00% for E-ACC/M-CAT to 24.14 % for E-ACC/M-CAA primers. The phylogenetic tree dendrogram showed that the 55 coconut accessions grown in western region of Thailand could be classified into four groups at 0.88 of similarity coefficients. This grouping observation is consistent with existing morphological classification of coconut tree. The first group to the third group in this study contains tall coconut group and mutant coconut from dwarf coconut group. While the forth group contains all coconut which belongs to the dwarf coconut group including ‘Nam Hom’ (‘Kon Chip’ and ‘Kon Klom’ strains) and ‘Nam Wan’ coconut from all production area with 0.895-1.00 of similarity coefficients indicated the narrow genetic diversity. Moreover, the results indicated that the ‘Nam Hom’ coconut samples both ‘Kon Chip’ and ‘Kon Klom’ strains collected in different locations were for the main part genetically similar with cophenetic correlation (r) = 0.9347.

Keywords: ‘Nam Hom’, coconut, AFLP, genetic diversity, Cocos nucifera L.

Article history: Received 18 July 2018, Accepted 28 February 2019