GENETICAL STUDIES OF SOME CULTIVATED ARAB DATE PALM VARIETIES USING DIFFERENT POLLINATORS

Abstract

Date palm has a socioeconomic significance and cultivated for food, fiber, and shelter in different arid and semiarid regions worldwide. It is a dioecious (separate male and female), perennial, diploid, and monocotyledonous plant. The total world production is 8,166.014 million tons of dates and Egypt was ranked the first in the world among date producing countries, with a production volume that amounted to about 1.6 million metric tons of dates. The present study was conducted through two growing seasons 2015 and 2016 at a private farm in desert region at Monifia Governorate on Barhee and Majdool date palms to evaluate the behavior of some male date palm cvs. ( Fard , Ghanamy , Dayri and Sapad ) and local date palm seedling males Sewy and Barhee. The molecular and biochemical analysis was carried out in the Biotechnology Research Lab, Horticultural Research Institute and Cairo University Research Park (CURP), Faculty of Agriculture ,Cairo University. The results of this investigation can be summarized as follows: 4. Characteristics of male date palms and two date palm cultivars (Barhee and Majdool) pollinated with six selected males a. Male characteristics 1) The male date palm cv. Sapad had significantly the highest value in the number of spathes/palm which recorded (32 and 33) in both seasons, respectively.