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Opuntia is one of the most widespread cacti, primarily due to their edible fruit and vegetable mass used as feed. The high demand for young plants of Opuntia made it necessary to find a rapid method of multiplication of the cactus, the safest method consisting in vitro micropropagation of species belonging to this genus. With aim of large production of plant material, a propagation system of three important prickly pear cactus cultivar (Opuntia ficus-indica) in Morocco was developed. Segments of healthy young cladode (containing one areole) were cultivated in Murashige and Skoog medium (MS) containing adenine sulfate (40 mg/1), monosodium phosphate (50 mg/l), sucrose (50 g/l), phytagel (0.3%) and benzyladenine (BA) at 22.2 μM, to start the process of micropropagation. In vitro-developed shoots from areoles were used as secondary explants to induce shoot development in the MS medium with 5 mg/l of BA. All of the three studied cultivars showed an important multiplication rate in this medium. 'Sidi Ifni M' ('Moussa') cultivar shows the greatest number of shoots followed by 'Sidi Ifni A' (' Aissa') and 'Delahia' 17.26, 14.12 and 12.13 respectively. Rooting of in vitrogenerated shoots was achieved most efficiently on half-strength MS basal medium supplemented with 0.5 mg/l of indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) or IAA. Rooting frequencies were in the range from 95 to 100% and the highest mean number of root (19.1) was obtained with IBA for 'Delahia' cultivar. All micropropagated plants were transferred to greenhouse and all of them survived acclimatization process and showed good overall growth.

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Recently, a large plantation has been established in Morocco, to reduce water and wind erosion, rangeland degradation, sand movement and to enhance the restoration of the vegetation cover. However, this plant material has unknown genetic characterization. In addition, several local classifications and morphological descriptions were used. The objective of this study was to analyze the genetic diversity using RAPD markers in a collection of 13 provenances of Moroccan Opuntia ficus indica (L.). Based on 13 random primers, the result showed that the level of diversity (h) and polymorphism varied according to the provenance. A high genetic differentiation was found between the provenances (Gst = 0.29), thus some loci were characteristic of certain provenances. These results can be used to characterize genetic resources of Morocco cactus pear, and to initiate a program of genetic improvement and selection.

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