Abstract: Black rice is a precious species of rice. Genetic diversity of black rice is a basic part of the research in breeding, origin and evolvement of black rice. 24 pairs of SSR primers were used to study genetic diversity among 29 black rice varieties coming from 6 provinces or city in China. The result showed that：76 polymorphic loci were detected by 24 pairs of SSR primers；The Average allelic richness of polymorphic loci, Index of genetic diversity and index of Shannon were 3.17, 0.5287 and 0.9058. The genetic similarity coefficients among all black rice varieties ranged from 0.0833 to 0.9583. This indicated that there was sufficient genetic diversity among the black rice varieties. Cluster analysis was made with unweighted pair group method for arithmetic averages (UPGMA) using genetic similarity coefficients. The 29 materials were clustered into 3 groups(Fig.2). The dendrogram revealed that the cluster pattern showed some correlation with the growth locations of the rice varieties.