Bol’shaya Morskaya, St. Petersburg, 190000 Russia, e-mail yu.chesnokov@vir.nw.ru Acknowledgements: Supported in part by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant ¹ 13-04-00128-а) A b s t r a c t Gene identification and mapping are one of the main goals of plant and animal genetics. <...> Upon verifying genetic linkage it is usually found which marker loci (markers) possess alleles cosegregated with the alleles of the desired locus. <...> Marker utility for these purposes depends on the number of alleles, which the marker possesses, and their relative rates. <...> They are the heterozygosity (Н) for which the evaluation method and variability formula are well known (M. Nei et al., 1974, 1979), and polymorphism information content (PIC) (D. Botstein et al., 1980). <...> Based on published data, we described the statistical approaches which are used for analysis of polymorphism information. <...> Herein, the value of polymorphism information content, heterozygosity and some associated values detected upon evaluation of genetic diversity on interspecific and intraspecific population levels are considered. <...> PIC shows haw the marker can indicate the population polymorphism depending on the number and frequency of the alleles (D. Botstein et al., 1980). <...> So the PIC reflects a discriminating ability of the marker and, in fact, depends on the number of known alleles and their frequency distribution, thus being equal to genetic diversity. <...> PIC maximal value for dominant markers is 0.5. <...> Note, that for the markers with equal distribution in the population the PIC values are higher. <...> They are much higher for markers with multiple alleles, and, however, also depend on the frequency distribution of the alleles. <...> Using 135 SSR (simple sequence repeats) and 123 S-SAP (sequence specific amplified polymorphism) primers, we found 135 SSR и 123 S-SAP polymorphic markers among 96 L. samples from the VIR (N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources) core collection. <...> Expected heterozigosity (HE) is usually used to describe the genetic diversity because it is less sensitive to the sample size compared to observed heterozigosity (HO). <...> The crossings in the population are occasional, if HO and HE are similar (i.e., no reliable differences found <...>