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.