The characterization of genetic diversity of a collection of Coffea arabica from Ethiopian origin has been performed with SSR markers. Initially 245 SSR markers were used for screening 21 genotypes of Coffea including 13 C. arabica accessions from Ethiopia collection and cultivars 'IAPAR59', 'Typica' and 'Bourbon', one genotype of C. canephora, and five hybrid genotypes that were used to derive mapping populations. The objective of this work was to discriminate SSR markers showing a significant level of polymorphism for futures studies of diversity and mapping projects. 19% of the markers showed useful polymorphism and will be used for further studies on the structure of the variability.