Introduction: Date Palm Biotechnology from Theory to Practice

Abstract

Date palm has been a cultivated tree crop for at least 5,000 years. Early date palm-specific technologies were developed to enhance crop productivity and fruit quality by means of selecting superior female palms and their propagation by offshoots. Other old innovations included crop and water management, segregation of trees by gender, artificial pollination, naming of cultivars and the characterization of fruit development stages, fruit flesh texture and fruiting seasonality. Modern biotechnology techniques are carrying forward date palm development in attempts to understand the genetic basis of the palm, to produce tissue-cultured plantlets on a large scale to more rapidly expand planting and replanting of date groves and to employ molecular breeding of new cultivars for increased fruit yield and resistance to pests and pathogens. This volume surveys the current state of date palm biotech- nology through contributions by leading researchers in the field