Abstract
Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) has been under cultivation as a socio-economic crop primarily in dry lands of North Africa, Middle East and Central America. The production of date palm is severely affected by many abiotic stresses including drought and salt stress. In a broader prospect, soil salinity has gained worldwide concerns, encompassing over 20% of the amble land. In the present study date palm cultivar, 'Sukary' was used to raise somatic embyogenic calli under various salt levels. After eight sub-culturing the calli were subjected step wise (a lap of 50mM increase after every four weeks) to 0, 200 and 400 NaCl treatments. The best performing calli were further subjected to multiplication media to generate the plants, which were assessed for salt tolerance/adaptation. The salt adapted (SA) and salt non-adapted (SNA) plantlets were assessed for the presence of any inherent somaclonal variation using 30 RAPD primers. The RAPD analysis did not produce any polymorphic bands and thus genetic variation was absent in the SA somaclones. The date palm somaclones thus obtained, have better performance on successive NaCl treatments due to salt adaptation mechanism.