Genetic, Morphological, and Biochemical Diversity of Argan Tree (Argania spinosa L.) (Sapotaceae) in Tunisia

Abstract

Argan trees are normally endemic to Morocco and Algeria, but hundreds of argan trees exist in Tunisia, some introduced from Morocco and some from unknown origins. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the genetic, morphological, and biochemical diversity of the argan trees in Tunisia. In this study, we used morphometric data collected from vegetative tissue, as well as pomological characteristics related to fruits, stones, and kernels. Genetic variation in 60 trees of Tunisian Argania spinosa L. was estimated using inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSRs). Mutation screening and genotyping by high-resolution melting (HRM) was performed to detect delta-6-desaturase (D6D) variants in the tested individuals, and finally fatty acid analysis of argan leaves with gas chromatography (GC) was performed. The plant materials used in this study originated from four different sites in Tunisia. Analysis of morphological characteristics showed large variability both within and between the studied collections. The analysis of ISSR polymorphisms gave information about the diversity within and between populations. HRM analysis showed that all 60 argan individuals were grouped into 10 different categories. The results of the gas chromatography analysis showed that the presence of omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA was noticeable in some argan leaves.

Comparative Study of Growth, Cadmium Accumulation and Tolerance of Three Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Cultivars

“…It has long been recognized that TM accumulation ability remarkably varies amongst different plant species and cultivars and is affected by the soil characteristics, TM accessibility in soil and plant genotypes [8,38,63]. In this study, NC2 accumulated more Cd in the root (Figure 5A), while IC8 exhibited higher Cd accumulation in its shoot ( Figure 5B).…”

Comparing adventitious root-formation and graft-unification abilities in clones of Argania spinosa

“…Unlike many edible fruit and nut trees, A. spinosa has not yet experienced intensive domestication and cultivation activity, including breeding, selection and vegetative propagation, thereby reducing genetic variability ( Miller and Gross, 2011 ). As a result, this species has retained its naturally high heterozygosity ( Louati et al., 2019 ). Thus, the collection of trees described here provides an interesting and unique biological system to study differences in adventitious root regeneration capability in different clones of the same species that are still so different from each other.…”

“…The high genetic variability among the trees was reflected, among other things, in the high proportion of individual trees with poor yields, thus rendering the crop unprofitable. Surveys of the natural population of argan trees in Morocco indeed show that the species exhibits high heterozygosity ( Louati et al., 2019 ), which is expressed in tremendous phenotypic differences between trees, including flowering phenology ( Zahidi and Abdelhamid, 2015 ), yield, fruit shape, number and size of the kernels ( Belcadi Haloui et al., 2017 ), and oil composition ( Ait Hammou et al., 2019 ) and content ( Ait Hammou et al., 2018 ). Failure to cultivate argan is due in part to the tree being very difficult to root ( Nouaim et al., 2002 ; Justamante et al., 2017 ; Mazri et al., 2022 ); to date, no commercial cultivar varieties or proper rootstocks have been selected.…”

Genetic Diversity of Blueberry Genotypes Estimated by Antioxidant Properties and Molecular Markers

“…A mantel test [ 52 , 53 ] was performed to check the correlation between the Euclidean dissimilarity distance matrix generated using standardized values of biochemical data in XLSTAT 2020 Version: 22.3.21.0 (©Addinsoft, New York, NY 10001, USA) and genetic distance matrices of EST–SSR, G–SSR, EST–PCR, and all primers combined, generated using GenAlEx version 6.5 [ 46 ].…”