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In Asian countries and among the oriental populations in the United States, vegetable soybeans are consumed much the same way as green peas are consumed. A need exists for developing soybean cultivars adapted to the U.S. environments to take advantage of the economic potential of vegetable soybeans for both domestic and international markets. During 1997, 12 vegetable soybean genotypes of exotic origin and two local U.S. soybean cultivars were evaluated for their agronomic performance in a randomized complete block, with four replications, at the Agric. Res. Stn. FVSU, Ga. At the R6 stage (when the seeds are of full size and still immature), plants from a half-meter-row length were sampled from each plot to estimate green pod and seed yield, and determine the nutritional quality of green beans. Significant differences were observed among genotypes for the agronomic and biochemical parameters studied. The green seed yield ranged from 7.1 (cv. Ware) to 14.0 Mg·ha^–1 (cv. Tanbagura). Three cultivars, Tomahamare, Mian Yan, and Tousan-122, produced green seed yields in excess of 12 Mg·ha^–1. The number of green pods varied between 1518 (Tanbagura) and 3526/m² (cv. Hutcheson). The green bean oil and protein contents, ranged from 53.1 to 105.4 and from 354.2 and 418.3 g·kg^–1, respectively. Thus, the green seeds contained only 30% of oil, but 50% to 80% of protein normally found in mature soybean seed. The glucose content was between 4.1% and 7.0%, while the phytate content varied between 0.93% and 1.3%. T he green seed yield was significantly correlated with number of green pods, number of green seeds, and green pod weight. This study showed that some exotic vegetable soybean genotypes may be suitable for production in the southeastern U.S.

Mexican marigold (Tagetes minuta, L.) plants were fertilized with urea, nitrokima and ammonium nitrate at the rates of 0, 25, 50 and 100 kg N/feddan (feddan = 4200 sqm). These fertilizers were added at three batches during the growing season.

The application of nitrogen fertilizers enhanced plant growth in terms of plant height, stem diameter, branch number and the dry weights of leaves, flowers and herb. Also, these fertilizers increased the volatile oil content in the leaves and flowers. The most effective fertilizer was ammonium nitrate especially when the highest rate was applied as it gave 3.87 g/plant compared to 2.28 g/plant for the control plants.

The contents of photosynthetic pigments, reducing and total soluble sugars were increased compared to the control plants.

Fig (Ficus carica L.) considers the original cultivated fruit trees and currently has become extinct. Such genetic resources should be identified, documented, and conserved. Morphology, pomology, and molecular markers are successful tools in assessing genetic diversity and classifying fig accessions. Twenty-one cultivated fig (F. carica L.) accessions were collected from Egypt and Libya. In Egypt, fig accessions are dispersed from Sinai in the east to El-Saloom in the west and from Alexandria in the north to Aswan in the south, whereas Libyan accessions were collected from Tubryq, Bengazi, and AlKufrah. Seventeen morphological, pomological, and fruit traits were used to characterize the fig accessions. Moreover, frozen young leaves were used to extract genomic DNA; 13 expressed sequence tag (EST) common fig primer pairs with 12 intersimple sequence repeat (ISSR)-anchored primers were used to detect the genetic diversity. Analysis of variance for fig accessions showed highly significant differences concerning morphological traits, i.e., the leaf length (centimeters) and width (centimeters) ranged from 5.4 and 6 cm to 23 and 23.5 cm, for Komesrey-El-Hammam, Abodey-Giza, and Black_Mission accessions, respectively. Also, fig accessions showed different shapes of leaf edge and fruits; they were categorized into four groups: straight, waved, zigzag, and serrated. The number of leaf lobes data ranged from one lobe for the ‘Green-yellow’, ‘Sultani Red Siwa’, and ‘Sultany Red Amria’ accessions to 10 lobes in the Aswany accession. The two-way hierarchical morphological cluster analysis distributed fig accessions into two main groups. The results detected high genetic diversity for the fig accessions that could be useful in the future breeding programs. Concerning molecular data, the EST markers showed highly polymorphism and informative (r = 0.61; 90.0%), with a total number of identified alleles of 78. We proved that a relatively greater number of alleles per locus characterizes the targeted loci among fig accessions, for which only one and two alleles per locus have been revealed, respectively, although ISSR showed a clear pattern and bands of the primers UBC807, UBC811, UBC812, UBC814, UBC815, UBC817, UBC818, and UBC823. In conclusion, a great range of variability was detected within the fig accessions. This diversification could enrich the genetic base of this genus, and more experiments are needed to reach its full potential.

Mango (Mangifera indica L.) is a fruit crops belong to the family Anacardiaceae and is the oldest cultivated tree worldwide. Cultivars maintained in Egypt have not been investigated previously. Mango was first brought to Egypt from South Asia. Morphological and molecular techniques were used to identify the genetic diversity within 28 mango cultivars. SSR and EST-SSR were used for optimizing germplasm management of mango cultivars. Significant variations were observed in morphological characteristics and genetic polymorphism, as they ranged from 0.71% to 100%. High diversity was confirmed as a pattern of morphological and genotypes data. Data from the present study may be used to calculate the mango relationship and diversity currently grown in Egypt.

Peppermint (Mentha piperita), sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum), and coriander (Coriandrum sativum) are important medicinal plants in the pharmacological industry. These plants are produced in commercial scale but their seeds exhibit low germination percentages under favorable germination conditions. Enhancing seed germination is thus crucial for improving the production of these plants. The influence of gibberellic acid (GA₃), indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), indol-3-butyric acid (IBA), and naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) on seed germination of the three plants were investigated. The seeds were soaked in each plant growth regulator at 50, 100, and 150 mg·L⁻¹ for 24 hours at 25 ± 2 °C. Seed germination was checked daily for 20 days and germination parameters including final germination percentage (FGP), corrected germination rate (CGRI), and number of days lapsed to reach 50% of FGP (GT₅₀) were recorded. The phosphorus and protein contents were determined in germinated seedlings on day 21 of culture. All plant growth regulators enhanced seed germination as compared with control. However, GA₃ improved seed germination more than IAA, IBA, and NAA. GA₃ at 100 mg·L⁻¹ significantly increased the FGP from 22.3% and 33.3% (control) to 74% and 65.6% for peppermint and sweet basil, respectively. Low concentration of GA₃ at 50 mg·L⁻¹ increased the FGP for coriander from 27% to 52.3%. GA₃ also increased CGRI, GT₅₀, phosphorus, and protein contents in germinated seedlings as compared with control. Seeds of peppermint, sweet basil, and coriander possess a physiological dormancy that could be elevated by GA₃ presowing treatment. This study established a successful methodology for optimizing seed germination to satisfy the demand for the medicinal parts of these plants in the pharmacological industry.

Carrot production is constrained by high levels of heat stress during the germination stage in many global regions. Few studies have been published evaluating the effect of heat stress on carrot seed germination or screening for genetic heat stress tolerance. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the response of diverse carrot germplasm to heat stress, identify heat-tolerant germplasm that may be used by plant breeders, and define the appropriate temperature for assessing heat tolerance in germinating carrot seed. To identify an appropriate screening temperature, three commercial hybrids and an open pollinated variety were evaluated at five temperatures (24, 32.5, 35, 37.5, and 40 °C). In preliminary studies, 35 °C was identified as the optimal temperature for screening heat tolerance of carrot seed. Cultivated and wild carrot plant introductions (PIs) (n = 270) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) representing 41 countries, inbred lines from the USDA Agricultural Research Service (n = 15), and widely grown commercial hybrids (n = 8) were evaluated for heat tolerance under heat stress and nonstress conditions (35 °C and 24 °C, respectively) by calculating absolute decrease in percent germination (AD), inhibition index (II), relative heat tolerance (RHT), and heat tolerance index (HTI). All measurements of heat tolerance identified significant differences among accessions; AD ranged from −13.0% to 86.7%, II ranged from 35.7% to 100.0%, RHT ranged from 0 to 1.36, and HTI ranged from 0.0 to 1.45. The broad-sense heritability (H²) calculations ranged from 0.64 to 0.86 for different traits, indicating a moderately strong genetic contribution to the phenotypic variation. Several wild carrot accessions and inbred lines displayed low levels of heat tolerance, whereas cultivated accessions PI 643114 (United States), PI 652400 and PI 652403 (Turkey), PI 652208 (China), and PI 652403 (Russia) were most heat tolerant. This is the first evaluation of heritability for heat stress tolerance during carrot seed germination, the first measure of HTI, and the first correlation calculation between heat and salt tolerance during germination in carrot.