Abstract
Date palm cultivation expanded very rapidly in Saudi Arabia during the last decade, and recently, date palm sector in Saudi Arabia is considered one of the largest date palm sectors in the world, as regarding total acreage, total number of palms, total production, and economical value. Due to the extremely great importance of this crop in Saudi Arabia, we should pay more attention to develop modern technologies regarding production under drought stress, fruit quality and marketing.Interest in phytochemical contents and antioxidant activity of fruits has been very high in recent years. Some researchers reported that some date fruit cultivars are very rich in phytochemical contents and antioxidant and their content of antioxidant exceed most of the other fruits. Accordingly, it is expected in the near future that the economical values of the date cultivars will depend mostly on their contents of antioxidants, and the higher the antioxidant contents in the fruits the higher the chance to export and market in Europe and foreign countries. This would necessitate the implement of modern technologies to identify different cultivars by using biotechnology for fingerprinting for the date palm cultivars and also determination of antioxidants contents and potency in the fruits as well as the relation to antioxidant potency with the genetic structure of the cultivars. In addition, development of necessary resources and genetic engineers aiming to develop more drought stress-tolerant cultivars of date palm