Morphological, Histological and Chemical Studies on Some Taxa of Genus Vicia

Abstract

The objectives of this investigation were to find out the remarkable morphological, histological and chemical differences among some wild taxa belong to genus Vicia, i.e., V. narbonensis var. narbonensis , V. narbonensis var. salmonea and V. serratifolia and the cultivated V. faba var. minor.Morphological characters reveal that; V. narbonensis var. narbonensis and V. narbonensis var. salmonea are more or less similar on this respect but differs from V. faba var.minor or V. serratifolia. The latter is very distinguishable from both varieties of V. narbonensis. V. faba var.minor has a unique characters differ from the other taxa.Studying the primary structure of root, stem and leaflet represents the histological differences among the wild taxa. The structure of the tap root (7 days old) presents remarkable differences in the types of vascular cylinder, being a trieach protostele in both varieties of V. narbonensis , tetrarch protostele in V. faba var.minor and pentarch protostele in V. serratifolia.V. serratifolia has the thickest tap root with widest vascular cylinder, which occupies the pith area among the studied taxa. In addition, V. serratifolia has the largest diameters of xylem arms and number of xylem vessels, while phloem area do not differ in other taxa. The morphological results indicate also that the secondary roots are three in both varieties of V. narbonensis, four in V. faba var. minor and five in V. serratifolia.The structure of the major and minor vascular bundles in the second stem internode below the shoot apex show that V.faba var.minor exceed all those of the other wild taxa.The histological structure of the leaflet shows that V. serratifolia has a characteristic property showing the six vascular bundles of leaflet arranged in two rows in the mesophyll, while other wild taxa and V. faba var. minor have one bundle only.Protein and non-protein amino acids results show slightly the same morphological results of taxa under investigation.