IntroductionAbout 750 species have been recognized within the genus Allium L. (Stearn, 1992) and at least 20 of these species are edible (Fritsch and Friesen, 2002). Economically imported and widely cultivated edible Allium species are onion (A. cepa L.), garlic (A. sativum L.), leek (A. porrum L.), chive (A. schoenoprasum L.), Chinese chive (A. tuberosum Rottl. ex Spreng), rakkyo (A. chinense G.Don) and Japanese bunching onion (A. fistulosum L.). Remaining edible Allium species are either cultivated locally or collected from wild for local consumption.The phylogeny of the genus Allium has been revised using several molecular approaches. The initial molecular approach for phylogenetic analyses of the genus Allium was based on restriction enzyme analysis of chloroplast DNA (Havey, 1991;von Berg et al., 1996). In these studies, the phylogenetic relationships among Allium species were found to be generally in agreement with their previous traditional taxonomic classification. Later nucleotide sequences of the some conserved DNA regions were utilized for the phylogenetic reconstruction of the genus Allium. The nucleotide sequence of the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) was one of the most commonly used DNA regions for discrimination of the