assessment of genetic diversity and relationships among salvia to detect the genetic variation and relationships among different salvia ecotypesspecies the gene targeted caat box derived polymorphism cbdp markers were employed in terms of their efficiency in this study 25 cbdp primers amplified a total of 323 different polymorphic fragments that discriminate all 26 salvia ecotypesspecies and produced an informative and differentiated dendrogram and population structure the cbdp markers were found to be effective in salvia genetic diversity estimation with regard to the averages polymorphism 100 polymorphism information content pic 089 marker index mi 45 and the effective multiplex ratio emr 501 which were higher than other reported markers on salvia the extent of heterozygosity 0034h0223 and shannon index 0042i0278 indicated a high level of genetic variation among salvia species the species containing the highest basic chromosome number x 12 revealed the highest values for the number of different na and effective n e alleles shannon index i and heterozygosity h additionally the tetraploid species showed high values of n a ne i and h compared to the diploid species mean of gene differentiation gst among salvia species was 0792 and the estimation of gene flow nm was 013 indicating high genetic differentiation remarkably similar results were obtained from the principal coordinate analysis pcoa as compared with the cluster analysis in which all different salvia species formed individual groups in conclusion because the cbdp markers are derived from the gene containing regions of the genome consequently the high genetic diversity among studied salvia species would be more useful for crop improvement programmes such as hybridization between species and qtl mapping the potential of cbdps for analysing the phylogeny and genetic diversity of salvia species is another key result with practical implications