The present study, which was conducted between 2009 and 2010, provides an analysis of the floristic composition, life forms, phenology, chorological spectrum and analysis of the vegetation in the deltaic part of Wadi Qena using multivariate analysis techniques. Twenty-five stands were sampled to represent, as much as possible, the vegetation variation in the study area. A total of 54 species (nineteen annuals and 35 perennials) belonging to 47 genera and nineteen families were recorded. The largest families were Fabaceae and Brassicaceae (nine and seven, respectively), Asteraceae and Poaceae (six for each), Chenopodiaceae (five), and Zygophyllaceae (four). Therophytes are the predominant life form (37%) followed by chamaephytes (24%), phanerophytes (18.5%), hemicryptophytes (9.29%) and cryptophytes (5.5%). Chorological analysis revealed that Saharo-Arabian (48%) and the Sudano-Zambezian (19.2%) chorotypes constitute the main bulk (67.2%) of the total flora of the studied area. The majority of the perennial species behave similarly to each other in their phenology, and usually perennials sprout at the end of February, become leafy in March, flower in April and produce fruits between April and July. Three main vegetation groups resulted from classification of the dominant vegetation. Canonical correspondence analysis revealed that magnesium, potassium and pH were the most effective soil variables.

The weed flora of common crops of the desert reclaimed arable lands in southern Egypt was studied. Field data were collected from three major crops: wheat as a winter crop, millet as summer crop and alfa-alfa as a perennial crop. 146 stands (fields) from 8 sites in Qena Governorate were permanently visited during 2013 and 2014. A total of 169 species (105 annuals, 64 perennials) of the vascular plants belonged to 121 genera in 39 families constituted the flora of the study area. The most species-rich families were Poaceae, Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Brassicaceae, Chenopodiaceae, and Euphorbiaceae. Annual herbs were the best represented life form, followed by annual grasses, trees and perennial shrubs. Ballochore and pogonochore were the most represented dispersal types of seeds, while cyclochore and auxochore were the least represented. 26 species were categorized as dominants (highest Q-values), where they have a wide ecological range of distribution. Classification of the associated vegetation in 146 stands by cluster analysis yielded 5 vegetation groups (A-E); the vegetation groups A and E were mainly represented by weeds in wheat and alfa-alfa (winter season), while most the stands of groups B, C and D were represented by species in millet and alfa-alfa (summer season). These groups were separated along the first two axes of Bray-Curtis ordination.

Sewage sludge improves agricultural soil and plant growth, but there are risks associated with its use, including high heavy metal content. In this study, experiments were carried out to investigate the role of endophytic Talaromyces pinophilus MW695526 on the growth of Triticum aestivum cultivated in soil amended with sewage sludge and its phytoremediation ability. T. pinophilus could produce gibberellic acid (GA) and stimulate T. aestivum to accumulate GA. The results showed that inoculation with T. pinophilus boosted plant growth criteria, photosynthetic pigments, osmolytes (soluble proteins, soluble sugars and total amino acids), enzymatic antioxidants (catalase, superoxide dismutase and peroxidase), K, Ca and Mg. On the other hand, it reduced Na, Na/K ratio, Cd, Ni, Cu and Zn in the growth media as well as in the shoot and root of T. aestivum. The results suggest that endophytic T. pinophilus can work as a barrier to reduce the absorption of heavy metals in T. aestivum cultivated in soil amended with sewage sludge.

Aerva javanica is one of Egypt’s most important traditional medicinal plants used as antidiarrheal and anthelmintic medicine and recently as an anticancer agent. In this study, variations among ten populations of Aerva javanica in different sites in the Eastern Desert of Egypt were analyzed based on morphological and ecological attributes and molecular variation expressed by Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) markers. Morphological diversity was higher for populations in the Wadi El-Markh and Bir Abbady regions than others. The polymorphism revealed by ten ISSR primers was 79.4% among populations. Distance trees created using the results obtained from soil variables, morphological characterizations, and molecular data showed that the highest similarity was 0.974 between Populations 8 and 9, while the lowest similarity was 0.715 between Population 1 and Population 3 regions. In conclusion, the obtained data are important to design a plan for sustainable conservation of Aerva javanica as an important medicinal plant having a wide interspecific genetic variability within various populations.

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