Atriplex is one of good adaptive plants to the Characteristics of drought fragile
environments, and it has high ability to tolerate many ecological stresses such as drought
and high temperature and salinity.
The plant is characterized by its huge
economic values because it has many uses, it’s
one of the high digestibility grazing plants and it is grazing by camels, goats and sheep all
the year, some of them have medicinally uses in repairing the increasing of blood sugar,
the freshness parts of some species use in preparing salads, even they have cook using, and
leaves usually have a salty taste even the plant grow in none salinity soils.
The morphological variety of four species of Atriplex were studying, two of them are
introduced (A. canescens, A. polycarpa) and two have natural spreading in Syria
(A. leucoclada, A. halimus).
The results indicated that biological type, life duration, plants color, fruit bracts
shape and fused of fruit bracts, plant smell, seed color, leaves shape and phyllotaxy are
considered the most morphological characters which show important morphological
differences among the studying species. These can be considered among classification
standards to help distinguish the studying species of Atriplex genus under their natural
spreading land, which consider the natural habitat for this important plant. Based on
studied morphological characters, an identification key for the studying species is
provided.
This investigation was carried out at the Laboratory of Biotechnology at
General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research (GCSAR), during the
season 2010-2011. The aim of this research was to study the genetic diversity
among twenty individ
ual plants of seven species and to determine the degree of
genetic similarity using the technique ISSR (Inter Simple Sequence Repeats)
and 10 primers were used for this purpose. All primers proved their
effectiveness in showing polymorphism between the studied species, primers
gave a total 195 allele with a polymorphic percentage 100%. The number of
bands for each primer varied from a minimum of 12 bands for the primer
(ISSR-4) to a maximum of 27 bands for the primer (ISSR-862) in an average of
19.5 bands for each primer, cluster analysis and Dendrogram showed the
highest degree of genetic similarity between accession A.leucoclada1 and
A.leucoclada2 (0.64), while it was low between species A.leucoclada3 and
A.glauca2 (0.10). Results showed vast genetic diversity among the studied
species.
