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Current-year needles from individual trees were used to study the genetic diversity in 10 natural populations of Picea glehnii (Masters) in Hokkaido, Japan, by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Data from 12 polymorphic loci encoding 33 alleles identified by nine enzyme systems were analysed. Mean number of alleles per locus, percentage polymorphic loci and observed and expected heterozygosities were 1.98, 75 per cent, 0.08 and 0.088, respectively. These genetic parameters varied considerably among populations. Diversity among the populations was small with a mean F[sub ST] of 0.022 and genetic distance of 0.0017. However, a X²-test showed that allele frequencies were different (P < 0.05) among the populations at 10 of the 12 loci; cluster and canonical discriminant analyses indicated that some of the populations were very different from others; and correlation analyses revealed significant relationships between some of the allele frequencies and longitude, latitude and altitude. Results suggest that genetic variation in P. glehnii is both geographically clinal and population-specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]