Mohammed Amine Serghini

University Ibn Zohr - Agadir · Biology

Article type: Saffron, derived from the flower of Crocus sativus L., is one of the most valuable and sought-after spices in the world. This review provides a comprehensive and novel overview of saffron horticultural practices, with a special focus on the innovative potential of its various byproducts. It encompasses the entire cultivation process,...

The ornamental plant Spathiphyllum wallisii is becoming increasingly popular worldwide, and tissue culture is regarded as a practical option for its massive production. Following the multiplication phase and successive subcultures for an extended period, some morphological changes in shoots were observed in Spathiphyllum explants, primarily a reduc...

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a valuable geophyte plant and one of the most expensive spices in the world. Recently, the demand for saffron spice has increased in worldwide markets owing to its enormous application and value. However, the production of saffron is limited by the vegetative propagation technique and the limited number of high-qualit...

High-quality genomic DNA is essential for genomic and molecular investigations such as next-generation sequencing. However, DNA extraction from medicinal plants like Crocus sativus can be challenging due to their high secondary metabolite content, which can interact with nucleic acids and affect the quality and yield of extraction. This study aimed...

Nowadays, plant genetic resources are often at risk of loss and destruction. Geophytes are herbaceous or perennial species that are annually renewed by bulbs, rhizomes, tuberous roots, or tubers. They are often subject to overexploitation, which, combined with other biotic and abiotic stresses, can make these plants more vulnerable to a decline in...

Saffron’s triploidy and male sterility result in generative limitations that highly impact its regeneration. Therefore, its natural reproduction is exclusively vegetative through progeny corms. The present work aims to improve in vitro saffron bud sprouting and adventitious shoot regeneration through direct organogenesis using different combination...

This study was conducted in public healthcare establishments in Guelmim city in south of Morocco to report medicinal plants used in folk medicine to treat diabetes. Three hundred sixty-two informants were interviewed through semi structured interviews. The inventory includes scienti<c, popular and common names of the plants, used parts and method o...

This study was conducted in public healthcare establishments in Guelmim city in south of Morocco to report medicinal plants used in folk medicine to treat diabetes. Three hundred sixty-two informants were interviewed through semi structured interviews. The inventory includes scientific, popular and common names of the plants, used parts and method o...

PurposeAfter being considered as a neglected product, agricultural waste is nowadays considered of paramount importance. It has become a source of many chemical compounds with industrial, pharmaceutical, and food applications. This study aims to evaluate the primary phytochemical content, the antioxidant properties, and the antimicrobial activities...

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is an aromatic and medicinal plant, commonly known as the world's most expensive spice. Understanding its genetic diversity is critical for developing conservation strategies and germplasm management. This study reports the first set of EST-SSR markers using C. sativus sequencing data available on the National Center for...

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is an autumnal herbaceous triploid plant; it is the source of saffron spice, recognized as the most expensive spice in the world. In this study, genetic diversity among 14 saffron accessions collected from different ancestral geographic areas in Morocco, Greece and France, has been assessed using inter-simple sequence re...

There has been lately a phenomenal rise in the use of natural dyes in different areas, although the principal problem with these natural dyes is their high cost for the production. The main idea of this study is to convert the waste of saffron flower to an eco-friendly natural colorant for sustainable textile coloration of wool fabric. This work st...

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) produces the most valuable spice and it has various medicinal, aromatic, and dyeing uses. It is sterile and asexually propagated through progeny corms. Its genetic variability is limited, but an extent of phenotypic plasticity is stated and epigenetically explained. To our knowledge, few studies and limited data are avai...

Citrus is one of the largest fruit crops grown in Morocco. Citrus crops gain in importance due to the jobs generated during the production process of fresh or processed fruit. Intensive agriculture is characterized by the excessive use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. This production system has generated serious environmental contamination...

In Morocco, saffron cultivation is mainly located in Taliouine region (95%), it’s a mountainous area (>1500m of altitude) characterized by a semi-arid climate. Saffron is organically grown where local corms are multiplied to serve as a propagation material. The number and size of corms are main parameters for saffron yield expression which is affec...

Saffron describes both the Crocus sativus plant and the spice resulting from its dried stigmas. Known as ‘red gold’, it is the most expensive spice in the world. It is valued in refined culinary art, used in traditional medicine and as a dye in textile and woodwork. Saffron’s ability significantly to grow in low quality soil makes it a culture of c...

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is an important plant because of its medicinal and aromatic characteristics. Tissue culture of this specie, through direct or indirect organogenesis, can improve the quality and quantity of the saffron product, by the large production of healthy selected saffron corms. The objective of this work is the determination of t...

Each region produces saffron of a particular quality depending on the cultivar, the qualities of the soil, altitude, weather conditions, sunshine intensity and the conditions of production, packaging and storage. To study some of these parameters, four cultivars of saffron (‘Sidi Hssaine’, ‘Agadir Melloul’, ‘Zegmouzen’ and ‘Askaouen’) were grown in...

Recently, a large plantation has been established in Morocco, to reduce water and wind erosion, rangeland degradation, sand movement and to enhance the restoration of the vegetation cover. However, this plant material has unknown genetic characterization. In addition, several local classifications and morphological descriptions were used. The objec...

We investigate here the effect of the density and the size of explants on the in vitro proliferation of globe artichoke shoots (Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus L.; accession 'Art 21'). For this purpose, we examined the rate of proliferation of separated shoots according to their sizes (< 1 cm, 1 to 1.5 cm, 1.5 to 2 cm and > 2 cm), and their densit...

Crocus sativus L. is a male sterile vegetatively propagated plant. Its flower produces stigmas that when dried, constitute the source of a spice commonly known as Saffron. Slow vegetative propagation and diseases limit the production and the development of saffron. “In vitro” culture could be an effective method to overcome these limitations by imp...

Pyrus mamorensis Trab. commonly called " wild pear " was considered for long time as an endemic of the Mamora forest of Morocco (northwest). Although lack of protection and it is threatened with extinction in its range, this tree is of great interest due to its ecological and medicinal properties. This study focused on evaluation of volatiles in Py...

Growing demand for plants of globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus L.) made it necessary to find a rapid method of multiplication for this plant. In vitro micropropagation is an alternative procedure for obtaining healthy, high quality and uniform clones, important to increase the cultivation area of this species. The contamination prob...

Recently, a large plantation has been established in Morocco, to reduce water and wind erosion, rangeland degradation, sand movement and to enhance the restoration of the vegetation cover. However, this plant material has unknown genetic characterization. In addition, several local classifications and morphological descriptions were used. The objec...

Opuntia is one of the most widespread cacti, primarily due to their edible fruit and vegetable mass used as feed. The high demand for young plants of Opuntia made it necessary to find a rapid method of multiplication of the cactus, the safest method consisting in vitro micropropagation of species belonging to this genus. With aim of large productio...

Opuntia is one of the most widespread cacti, primarily due to their edible fruit and vegetable mass used as feed. The high demand for young plants of Opuntia made it necessary to find a rapid method of multiplication of the cactus, the safest method consisting in vitro micropropagation of species belonging to this genus. With aim of large productio...

Le safran représente l’épice la plus chère au monde. Cette épice dite aussi ‘or rouge’ est constituée par les stigmates séchés du Crocus sativus L., une plante mâle stérile triploïde (2n=3x=24)(Karaoglu et al., 2007). C. sativus appartient à la sous classe des monocotylédones et à la famille des iridaceae. Il se propage d’une manière végétati...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the antifungal activity of 50 plant species, harvested in different regions of southern Morocco, against Penicillium italicum, the causal agent of citrus blue mold. The in vitro antifungal activity of plant tissue powder was determined using the agar plate method. Our results showed that among the 50 plants tes...

An efficient protocol for in vitro multiplication of globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus L.) accession Art 21 was developed using axillary buds obtained from seedlings derived from embryos. A high regeneration efficiency (7.56 shoots/explants) was achieved with axillary buds on a proliferation medium containing 1 mg/l kinetin and 0.1...

a b s t r a c t The aim of this study was to evaluate the antifungal activity of 50 plant species collected in different regions of southern Morocco against Penicillium italicum, the causal agent of citrus blue mold. The in vitro antifungal activity of plant powders was determined using the agar plate method. Our results showed that among the 50 pl...

The Bayoud, caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. albedinis (Foa), is the most destructive disease of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L) in Morocco and Algeria, with no effective control strategy yet available. In this work, two bacteria, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain Ag1 (Ag) and Burkholderia cepacia strain Cs5 (Cs), were examined for their poten...

Control of Citrus blue mold, caused by Penicillium italicum, has been accomplished by postharvest application of synthetic fungicides. However, the development of resistant fungal strains and increasing public concern over food safely and the environment are driving a search for alternative disease control strategies. In vitro trials were conducted...

Histochemical and ultrastructural analyses were carried out to assess structural and biochemical changes in date palm roots pretreated with salicylic acid (SA) then inoculated with Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. albedinis (Foa). Flavonoids, induced proteins, and peroxidase activity were revealed in root tissues of SA-treated plants after challenge by Fo...

Blue mold, caused by Penicillium italicum, is one the most economically important postharvest disease of citrus fruits. The control of this mold is largely dependent on application of synthetic fungicides, which has adverse effects on the environment and promotes the development of strains resistant to the active components used. To overcome this p...

In this study, 10 populations of whiteflies B. tabaci were collected from tomato greenhouses in the Souss valley of Morocco and bioassayed for resistance to three commonly used insecticides (Imidacloprid, Thaimethoxam and Methomyl). Using Leaf-Dip bioassay, we concluded that all populations tested were resistant to Imidacloprid and Thiamethoxam. Th...

Introduction Les substances naturelles issues des végétaux ont des intérêts multiples mis à profit dans l'industrie : en alimentation, en cos-métologie et en dermopharmacie. Parmi ces composés on retrou-ve dans une grande mesure les flavonoïdes qui sont présents chez toutes les plantes vasculaires ; ils se sont surtout illustrés en thérapeutique co...

Arabis mosaic virus (ArMV) is a nepovirus that is serologically distantly related to grapevine fanleaf virus (GFLV). Both ArMV and GFLV induce grapevine degeneration disease. Several ArMV isolates, unlike isolates of GFLV, produce upon in vitro translation of RNA2 a polyprotein (P2) that forms a double band in polyacrylamide-SDS gels. Cloning of fu...

Grapevine fanleaf nepovirus (GFLV) is responsible for the economically significant "court-noué" disease in vineyards. Its genome is made up of two single-stranded RNA molecules (RNA1 and RNA2) which direct the synthesis of polyproteins P1 and P2 respectively. A chimeric coat protein gene derived from the C-terminal part of P2 was constructed and su...

Transcripts were produced in vitro by run-off transcription from full-length cDNA of RNA1 and RNA2 of grapevine fanleaf nepovirus (GFLV; isolate F13) cloned downstream from a bacteriophage RNA polymerase promoter. These transcripts, which possess a 5' terminal cap structure and a non-viral G residue instead of the naturally occurring genome-linked...

The coat protein (CP) cistron of Grapevine Fanleaf virus strain F13 (GFLV-F13) has been located in the C-terminal region of the 122k polyprotein encoded by the genomic RNA 2 [Serghini et al. (1990) J. Gen. Virol. 71: 1433-1441]. A chimeric CP gene of GFLV-F13 including a short sequence corresponding to 3 restriction sites, the leader sequence of th...

The nucleotide sequence of the genomic RNA2 (3774 nucleotides) of grapevine fanleaf virus strain F13 was determined from overlapping cDNA clones and its genetic organization was deduced. Two rapid and efficient methods were used for cDNA cloning of the 5' region of RNA2. The complete sequence contained only one long open reading frame of 3555 nucle...

The nucleotide sequence of cDNA copies of grapevine fanleaf virus (strain F13) satellite RNA has been determined. The primary structure obtained was 1114 nucleotides in length, excluding the poly(A) tail, and contained only one long open reading frame encoding a 341 residue, highly hydrophilic polypeptide of Mr37275. The coding sequence was bordere...