A total of 107 Salmonella isolates (37 S. Typhimurium, 26 S. Hadar, 15 S. Enteritidis, 15 S. Braenderup, and 14 S. Albany) isolated from ducks and their environments in Penang, Malaysia were typed using enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) to determine their genetic diversity. Analysis of the Salmonella strains by ERIC produced DNA fingerprints of different sizes for differentiation purposes. The DNA fingerprints or band sizes ranged from 14-8300bp for S. Typhimurium, 146-6593bp for S. Hadar, 15-4929bp for S. Enteritidis, 14-5142bp for S. Braenderup and 7-5712bp for S. Albany. Cluster analysis at a coefficient of 0.85 grouped the Salmonella strains into various clusters and singletons. S. Typhimurium were grouped into 10 clusters and 6 singletons, S. Hadar were grouped into 3 clusters and 18 singletons, S. Enteritidis were grouped into 3 clusters and 7 singletons, S. Braenderup were grouped into 4 clusters and 7 singletons, and S. Albany were grouped into 3 clusters and 7 singletons with discriminatory index (D) ranging from 0.92-0.98. ERIC proved to be a useful typing tool for determining the genetic diversity of the duck Salmonella strains.

Key words: Ducks, ERIC, Genetic diversity, Salmonella strains