Integrated biotechnological approaches for conservation and improvement of date palm in North Africa

Summary

Increasing date palm productivity can be achieved through increasing the productivity of the existing trees or expanding palm cultivation area. Extensive breeding programs for the selection of superior diseases or pest resistance clones through the traditional methods are a tedious effort due to the long life cycle and strongly heterozygous nature of palm in addition to insufficient and expensive offshoots required for new cultivation. Accordingly there is a dire need for advanced biotechnology as a new emerging technology to solve these problems. In North Africa , date-palm is seriousely menaced either by genetic erosion or by plagues such as the bayoud disease and the brittle leaves recently reported. Moreover, the red palm weevil constitutes one of the most threatening pests in north Africa. The establishment of fighting strategy aiming at the preservation of the germplasm has become therefore imperative. This would be made possible taking advantages of the molecular methods together with the in vitro methods via arganogenesis or embryogenesis, and transformation. The overall goal of this project is to develop an Integrated biotechnological approach for conservation and improvement of date palm. To the long term this will sustain and expand palm groves in North Africa with impact on socio economic development and develop strategies against major plagues in North Africa

Principal Investigators & Organizations