Expressed sequence tag (EST) derived simple sequence repeats ( SSRs, microsatellites) were screened and identified from 3864 almond EST sequences, and the spectra of SSRs in the non-redundant EST sequences from 1388 contigs were investigated by MISA software after sequence assembly. 965 (59.09%) SSRs were detected. The EST-SSR occurs every 1.0kb in almond ESTs, and SSRs with mono-repeat motifs are the most abundant in almond. The spectra of di- and trinucleotide repeated SSR types are average and less than ...