Bamboos are arborescent grasses belonging to the family Poaceae and are groupedunder the subfamily Bambusoideae. Bambusoideae are differentiated from othermembers of the family by the presence of petiolate blades with parallel venation andstamens are three, four, six or more, gynoecium is with single style with one to threestigmas and caryopsis. Bamboo is regarded as the major resource that meets theneed of common man and also a poverty alleviator due to its multipurpose uses. TheRaigad district, Maharashtra, India, is a good pocket of wild as well as cultivatedbamboo. This district is rich in Bamboo flora specially four species viz. Bambusabambos; Pseudoxytenanthera ritcheyi; Pseudoxytenanthera stocksii andDendrocalamus strictus. To study the genetics of bamboo, one has to faceenormous difficulties simply because of rare flowering and we cannot makehybridizations as easily as like other angiosperms. The randomly amplifiedpolymorphic DNA (RAPD) method is used for genetic characterization of bamboo.This method of DNA profiling is proven excellent for identification, phylogeneticanalysis, population studies and genetic linkage mapping of many plant species. Establishing multilocus markers RAPD analysis of genomes provides a versatile andrapid technology requiring low infrastructural input and use of arbitrary primers fordeveloping plant DNA fingerprinting. In the present study, a comparative geneticanalysis of four species of bamboo B. bambus, P. ritcheyi, P. stocksii and D. strictuscollected from different locations of Raigad district of Maharashtra, India had beencarried out using PCR-RAPD analysis. The present results warrant an extensivesurvey of genetic variation between the given four species of bamboo. The resultswould be helpful in designing sequence characterized amplified regions (SCAR)marker for each species. These SCAR markers can be used as diagnostic marker toauthenticate samples of given four species. Key words: Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), DNA-fingerprinting,sequence characterized amplified regions (SCAR), Genetic characterization, ritcheyi,stocksii, Raigad.