Salvia officinalis is one of the most important medicinal and aromatic plants in terms of nutritional and medicinal value because it contains a variety of vital active ingredients. Terpenoid compounds, particularly monoterpenes (C10) and sesquiterpenes, are the most important and abundant among these active substances (C15). Terpenes play a variety of roles and have beneficial biological properties in plants. With these considerations, the current study sought to clone theNAD+-dependent farnesol dehydrogenase (SoFLDH, EC: 1.1.1.354) gene from S. officinalis. Functional analysis revealed that, SoFLDH has an open reading frame of 2,580 base pairs that encodes 860 amino acids.SoFLDH has two conserved domains and four types of highly conserved motifs: YxxxK, RXR, RR (X8) W, TGxxGhaG. However, SoFLDH was cloned from Salvia officinalis leaves and functionally overexpressed in Arabidopsis thaliana to investigate its role in sesquiterpenoid synthases. In comparison to the transgenic plants, the wild-type plants showed a slight delay in growth and flowering formation. To this end, a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis revealed that SoFLDH transgenic plants were responsible for numerous forms of terpene synthesis, particularly sesquiterpene. These results provide a base for further investigation on SoFLDH gene role and elucidating the regulatory mechanisms for sesquiterpene synthesis in S. offcinalis. And our study paves the way for the future metabolic engineering of the biosynthesis of useful terpene compounds in S. offcinalis.

In Egypt, no commercial tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) varieties are available which are resistant to the late blight, one of the most important tomato diseases, caused by the phytopathogenic oomycete Phytophthora infestans. The wild tomato (Lycopersicon pimpenellifolium) shows resistance to P. infestans. So, in this investigation an interspecific cross between L.esculentum cv. Castle Rock and L. pimpenellifolium accession L3708 from the AVRDC were made. The genitors, F1, F2, BC1 and BC2 were used to study the inheritance of resistance to P. infestans and to estimate the genetic parameters associated with resistance. The resistance to P. infestans is controlled polygenic ally. The analysis of variances and genetic parameters suggested that this type of resistance was inherited quantitatively, and dominance was predominant over susceptibility, and not for resistance, that would be more interesting. The data supported the hypothesis that race-non-specific resistance in L. pimpenellifoliumL3708 is controlled by partially-dominant and dominant epistatic effects. The heritability in broad (Hb.s%) and narrow sense (Hn.s %) estimates were 73.28 and 26.86% for severity revealed the magnitude of the environmental factors on the total variation. The dominance gene effects were quire important in the inheritance of resistance to P. infestans. Estimates of additive gene effects were of low, magnitude. Epistatic gene effects were considered to be more important than the additive gene effects in the inheritance of resistance to P. infestans in the cross under study. The additive x additive, additive x dominance and dominance x dominance gene effects were highly significant. The reciprocal recurrent selection breeding is the best method to improve the resistance to P. infestans.

Fennel (Family Apiaceeae) is one of those strategic medicinal and aromatic plants in Egypt with great value as an economical exported plant. Fennel undergoes propagation through breeding of some fennel cultivars from different world region in order to keep out of genetic deterioration in the native Egyptian cultivars, and enrich its favorable active ingredients. The advanced plant breeding programs depend on some markers such as morphological, cytological, biochemical and molecular markers to study its genetic diversity. In this work two molecular markers ISSR and SCoT markers were used to assessment of genetic diversity among six fennel cultivars (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) planted in Egypt; three of Egyptian origin (Balady, Elalamy and Azoricum) and the other ones are of different origin (Holland, Indian and German). The analyzed data reveals that the ISSR marker is more discriminating, provides more informative data than SCoT marker and can be reliable to evaluate the genetic diversity among the six examined cultivars as it performs the highest percentage of polymorphism 61% and higher unique bands number (4). According to ISSR molecular marker German and Indian cultivars are close distant; can exchange gene in between them smoothly despite the ultimate change in the environmental and weather conditions of their origin land. In conclusion, according to Nie , s and li , s coefficient based on SCoT marker analysis between the cultivars; Indian cultivar was quite distant from Azoricum by the same time that Azoricum is close distant to Holland, as well as; Elalamy is close distant to Balady.

Background: The genus Triticum L. includes diploid, tetraploid, and hexaploid species. DNA barcoding is a new method to identify plant taxa by using short sequences of DNA and within a short time. In this investigation, we determined a phylogenetic analysis of 20 different Triticum species by partial chloroplast Maturase encoding gene (matK). Materials and methods: Twenty accessions of different Triticum species diploid, tetraploid, and hexaploid were obtained from different countries. Genomic DNA was isolated from young leaves of studied samples and then used as a template for PCR reaction. PCR products were checked by electrophoresis, purified, sequenced, and submitted in the GenBank nucleotide sequence database, the nucleotide sequence was translated into an amino acid sequence. The nucleotide and amino acid sequences were aligned with Clustal W multiple sequence alignment programs to obtain the phylogenetic tree depending on two statistical data analysis such as bootstrapping and pairwise distance from both nucleotide and amino acid sequences. Results: The phylogenetic tree obtained from both nucleotide and amino acid sequences divided the 20 Triticum species into two groups, A and B. Group A represented the diploid Triticum species. Group B was divided into two subgroup, I and II. Subgroup I represented the hexaploid Triticum species and subgroup II represented the tetraploid species. Conclusion: The matK gene sequence has a critical role in discriminating the closely related Triticum species. So these sequences could be used as a DNA barcode for detecting the evolutionary history of Triticum species.

This study was carried out to produce promising hybrids of watermelon. Five lines i.e. Line 1 = L 84; Line 2 = L 85 ; Line 3 = L 94 ; Line 4 = L 84g and Line 5 = L 63 were used as female parents and crossed with four cultivars i.e. Tester 6 = Crimson sweet , Tester 7 = Charleston Gray, Tester 8 = Sugar Baby , and Tester 9 = Giza1 as male parents (testers) using a factorial mating design ,in the summer season of 2010.Twenty hybrids and their nine parents (five lines and four testers) were evaluated at the Sakha farm of Horticulture Research Institute in the summer season of 2011 along with check variety Aswan F1 to study heterosis and combining ability. Vine length; No. of branches per plant; No of fruits per plant; average of fruit weight; total yield per plant; No. of days to maturity and total soluble solids content (TSS) were studied. Averages of heterosis values over better parent were positively significant for many studied traits. Both general and specific combining ability were highly significant for many traits. Line 5 is a good combiner for vine length with value 15.73 and Line 1 is a good combiner for No. of branches per plant with value of 0.88. Line 2 is a good combiner for No. of fruit per plant with value of 0.46. Line 3 is a good combiner for average of fruit weight and total yield per plant with values of 0.41 and1.43,respectively .. Line 2 and tester 8 were a good combiner for earliness with of values of-4 and-5.3, respectively, and Line 4 is a good combiner for TSS% with value of 1.19. The best crosses were, 5x6 for vine length with value of 39.67, 4x8 for No. of branches with value of 1.14, 3x7 for No. of fruit per plant with value of 1.1 and 2x8 for average of fruit weight, total fruit yield per plant and TSS with values 1.7, 10.07and 1.13,respectively, 2x9 for earliness with value of-9.67