TAXONOMIC STUDIES ON SOME SPECIES OF THE GENUS CASSIA L.

Abstract

The present work is devoted to in vestigate the macro and micromorphological characters of vegetative and reproductive orangs of 18 species belonging to genus Cassia.Also , the micromorphological attributes of seeds of seventeen species using light and scanning electron microscope, in addition the storage seed protein of seventeen Cassia Spp. were studied using SDS-PAGE techique. In this work the results were analyzed using numerical methods .The different diagnostic key characters are presented in the form of cumulative tables in order to f acilitate observation of variation,similarities and differentiations among the studied species. The main conclusions can be summarized as follows: 1- Con struction of artificial ke ys based on macro and micromorphological characters of vegtaive organs ( sten leaf and petiole) and reproductive orange ( flowers& pods). 2- The use of NTSYS- PC V.1.5. to perform the numerical analysis of the macromorphological characters "1 40 characters" and result of storage seed protein electrophoresis "25 characters" of seventeen studied species. In this respect ,three phenogram s based on macromorphological characters ,storage seed protein electrophresis attributes and combined charac ters of both trends "165 characters" are obtained to show the si milarities and d i ssimilarities among the Cassia Spp. 3- the comparison of the current results with the previous taxonomic treatment showing similar opinion in delimition of the genus Cassia into two subgenera : Fistula and Senna. 4- the prese nt study confirms the usefulness of the macromorphological attributes as valid taxonomic criterion. 5- Finall y the bioinformative survey in the present work can be available for further studies in the fields of seed bank ,germplasm col l ection ,con servation , finger prints,genetic engineerring and biodiversity d ata management .Thus the present study may be considered as conplementary contribution in these modem trends.