The extent and distribution of sex-related and total genetic variation in Hagenia abyssinicarn(Bruce) J.F. Gmel collected from four geographical regions of Ethiopia were analyzed usingrnrandom amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers for 80 plants representing 8 populations.rnThree decamer primers generated a total of 19 polymorphic bands, across the 80 plant, with 6-7rnbands per primer and an average of 6 bands. The amount of genetic variation within thernpopulations (HPop=0.32 for female populations; HPop=0.41 for male population; HPop=0.45 forrnthe entire population) and within the geographical regions (Hr=0.36 for female population; 0.51rnfor male population; 0.52 for the entire population) was low to moderate. Similarly, the averagerngenetic distance between populations (0.08 for female population; 0.09 for male population; 0.05rnfor the entire population) as well as between regions of sampling (0.05 for female population;rn0.05 for male population; 0.02 for the entire population) was found to be low. The low geneticrnvariation may be due to the reduced population size of the tree species in Ethiopia because ofrnhabitat change and indiscriminate clearing and over-cutting of trees for various purposes.rnPartitioning of the genetic variation into between and within populations as well as between andrnwithin regions of sampling revealed that 65% (for female population), 70% (for male population)rnand 82% (for the entire population) of the variation was found within the populations whereasrn75% (for female population), 88% (for male population) and 93%(for the entire population) ofrnthe variation was found within regions. Cluster analysis of genetic distance estimates furtherrnconfirmed the low level of differentiation of the tree species both on population and regionalrnbases. The genetic diversity of male individuals was found to be greater than that of the femalernindividuals. The relatively lower genetic diversity in the female individuals may be due to the higher female mortality resulting from the added burden of fruit and seed setting in femalernplants. Spearmanâ€™s correlation analysis showed that primer OPA-10 was found significantlyrncorrelated with the male sex (locus OPA10-1: r = 0.395 significant at 0.01level) and hencernwould help to identify the male sex. Discriminant analysis showed that this primer was also foundrnuseful to identify which trees belong to which region.