The discriminative power of ITS-PCR, ITS-PCR RFLP and mitochondrial (mt)-DNA RFLP were evaluated for differentiation of yeasts of importance for surface ripened cheeses. In total 60 isolates were included. Of these, 40 strains of the following species, Debaryomyces hansenii var. hansenii, D. hansenii var. fabryi, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida zeylanoides, Kluyveromyces lactis and Yarrowia lipolytica, were obtained from culture collections and 20 isolates of D. hansenii representing six different phenotypes were collected from seven Danish producers of surface ripened cheeses. ITS-PCR was evaluated for differentiation at species level on the 40 strains obtained from culture collections. Ten strains of each variety of D. hansenii and five strains of each of the above mentioned species were analysed. For each of the investigated species, a specific ITS1-5.8S rDNA-ITS2 region size was observed. Accordingly ITS-PCR was found valuable for differentiation at species level of yeasts of importance for surface ripened cheeses. ITS-PCR RFLP was investigated for the purpose of strain typing of D. hansenii. Ten CBS strains of each variety of D. hansenii were analysed. Only one enzyme (TaqI) out of several investigated (BamHI, DpnI, Fnu4HI, HaeIII, HindIII, HpaII, NlaII, Sau3AI, TaqI) demonstrated genetic diversity within the strains. This enzyme divided the 20 strains in three groups. Sequence analysis of the ITS1-5.8S rDNA-ITS2 region for the type strains of each variety of D. hansenii showed an identity of 99.84%, corresponding to a difference in one basepair. Based on these results, ITS-PCR RFLP was found ineffective for strain typing of D. hansenii. MtDNA RFLP using HaeIII and HpaII was evaluated for strain typing of D. hansenii on the 20 CBS strains of D. hansenii. The CBS strains were divided into 16 groups according to their restriction profiles, which proved the method useful for typing of D. hansenii at subspecies level. The 20 dairy isolates showed a lower genetic variability than the CBS strains as they were divided into eight groups. Cluster analysis of the 20 CBS strains and the 20 dairy isolates based on their mtDNA restriction profiles showed (max. similarity level = 52%) that the dairy isolates only clustered with the CBS strains of D. hansenii var. hansenii. For some of the dairies more than one strain of D. hansenii were found to be involved in the ripening process, indicating that the method could be useful for subspecies typing and investigation of the microbial succession between strains of D. hansenii during the ripening process of surface ripened cheeses.