XVI International Botanical Congess

Date palm propagation through tissue culture holds tremendous economic potential. An economically successful date palm tissue culture program is dependent on the ability to type date palm cultivars as they are being multiplied. Traditional typing techniques are tedious and inefficient. Recently, molecular techniques based on DNA have been very successful in typing cultivars of a variety of crop plants. The suitability of DNA fingerprints as genetic markers in date palm was tested. 22 important date palm cultivars were subjected to DNA fingerprinting analysis. The study shows that both RAPD and minisatellite markers may be used to genetically fingerprint date palm cultivars. Minisatellite based DNA markers were highly sensitive and more effective in revealing polymorphism and allowed the identification of the 22 cultivars.