Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is widely used for many industrial and food applications. Nine potato cultivars were planted and collected from a private farm in new Salihiyyah city, Sharkia governorate, Egypt to compare between them at morphological, molecular, biochemical and anatomical levels. Our results indicated that the Inova cultivar was better, however the Bafana cultivar was worse in relation to yield parameters. Inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) molecular marker has been used to determine the genetic diversity between these nine cultivars. Through using ten primers we obtained 98 bands, 85 of which were polymorphic by 87%. The highest similarity value (0.827) was found between Caruso and Alliance as the closest but the lowest value (0.418) was found between Charlotte and Bafana as the most distant. Everest tuber contained great amounts of total phenolic and peroxidase activity, while the Bafana tuber contained small amounts of it compared to other cultivars. The phellem layer of the Everest tuber had more thickness than others and the number of phellem rows was the highest. However, the Bafana cultivar listed the lowest value compared to other cultivars. Lower values from both of total bacterial and total fungi were recorded on the tuber of the Everest cultivar. However, Bafana cultivar was recorded to have a higher value of both compared to other cultivars. We suggest that the ISSR marker is a suitable procedure to examine the potato's genetic diversity at the DNA level. The Everest cultivar is considering the best cultivar to planting and breeding in Egypt.ª 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf

Two pot experiments were conducted during 2014 and 2015 successive growing summer seasons to study the anatomical structure changes in leaves and stems of Indian borage plants (Plectranthus amboinicus Lour. Sprengel) due to exposure drought and salt stress. The anatomical analysis data showed that plants supplied with 65% of water holding capacity (WHC) showed considerable increase in both leaves and stems dimensions as compared to the other irrigation levels of water (45 and 25% of WHC). In addition, the highest drought stress level (25% of WHC) markedly decreased all tested parameters of both leaves and stems of Indian borage plant. As for the effect salinity on the anatomical structure of the leaf blade through the midrib region as well as lamina indicated that increasing salinity level decreased anatomical dimensions of midrib region (midrib thickness), dimensions of the midvein bundle (length, width, number of xylem vessels and average diameter of xylem vessel) and dimensions of the lamina (lamina thickness, palisade thickness and spongy tissue thickness). It was clear that the high level of salinity ECw (11.7 dSm-1) caused destroy almost the contents of vascular bundle in midrib region. The same trend was noticed on stem anatomical parameters and showed that increasing salinity level markedly reduced most of stem anatomical characters, i.e., diameter of the whole section, vascular cylinder thickness, fibers tissue thickness, phloem thickness, xylem thickness, average number of xylem vessel, average diameter of xylem vessel and pith diameter mean while thickness of cortex was increased. It was noticed that the high quantities xylem fibers in control plants was recorded and it decreased with low salinity level ECw (3.9 dSm-1), whereas, moderate and high salinity levels ECw (7.8 and 11.7 dSm-1) led to absence xylem fibers.

This investigation was carried out during the two successive

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This study was conducted at Ornamental Nursery, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Egypt, during two consecutive seasons of 2015 and 2016. The objective of this study was to investigate two of the key factors likely to influence rooting ability i.e., indole butyric acid (IBA) concentration (0.0, 1000, 2000 or 4000 ppm) and rooting media type (sand, peat moss, sand: peat moss or sand: clay, at equal volume proportions) as well as their combinations on rooting and shooting ability and quality of Pachira aquatica cuttings. Rooting (%), root number/cutting, root length (cm), fresh and dry weights of roots/cutting (g), No. of shoots/cutting, fresh and dry weights of shoots/ cutting (g), No. of leaves/cutting, leaf area/cutting (cm 2) as well as fresh and dry weights of leaves/cutting (g) as growth parameters were recorded. Also, total chlorophyll (SPAD unit), total carbohydrates (%), total nitrogen (%), total phosphorus (%) and potassium (%) in the leaves were determined. Moreover, anatomical study was conducted for selected treatment (peat moss and sand, 1:1 V/V, with different IBA concentrations). Results showed that in most cases the maximum values of the above mentioned characters were obtained by treating cuttings with IBA at 4000 ppm. Anatomical study of adventitious roots showed that the maximum root diameter with full differentiated vascular tissue was belonged to cuttings treated with IBA at 4000 ppm. The ultimate values of most of the above mentioned parameters were detected when cuttings were cultured in peat moss or its mixture with sand without significant difference between both treatments. Generally, among different combination treatments, treating cuttings with IBA at 4000 ppm before culturing them in peat moss and sand (1:1, V/V) proved to be the most promising treatment in this regard.