An-Najah Staff

Several thymes species were grown in Palestine and have socio-economical values. Traditionally, morphological features are used for their taxonomy and discrimination. However, these methods fail to pro-vide an accurate for discrimination and authentication, suggesting the use of other method inevitable. In this study, RAPD method was used for genotypes identification and characterization of five most so-cio-economical Palestinian thymes: Thymus syriacus, Thymus fruticosus, Thymus incanus, Thymus majora-na, and Thymus capitatus. Eight out of ten decamer primers were tested for their ability to generate poly-morphism from selected thyme species using RAPD-PCR, and the obtained data were analyzed. The primers (OPD-19, OPH-02 and OPAN-08) were generated 78.6% average polymorphism across five studied Thyme species. Pairwise similarity analysis revealed banding patterns between the studied plant species ranged from 0.18 to 0.67. By this study, genetic diversities of studied five Palestinian Thyme species were ascer-tained successfully using RAPD markers, concluding that it could be useful tools for identifying Thymes spe-cies in any putative breeding programs that will be carried in the country.

Bioenergy should play an essential part in reaching targets to replace petroleum-based transportation fuels with a viable alternative, and in reducing long-term carbon dioxide emissions, if environmental and economic sustainability are considered carefully. Here, we review different platforms, crops, and biotechnology-based improvements for sustainable bioenergy. Among the different platforms, there are two obvious advantages to using lignocellulosic biomass for ethanol production:higher net energy gain and lower production costs. However,the use of lignocellulosic ethanol as a viable alternative to petroleum-based transportation fuels largely depends on plant biotechnology breakthroughs. We examine how biotechnology, such as lignin modification, abiotic stress resistance, nutrition usage, in planta expression of cell wall digestion enzymes, biomass production, feedstock establishment, biocontainment of transgenes, metabolic engineering, and basic research, can be used to address the challenges faced by bioenergy crop production.