Biosystematics and morphometric variability of African mahogany grown from the El-Kassasin Zone

Khaya senegalensis is a highly valuable timber tree. It occurs in a wide range of tropical and humid climatic ecology regions. The present study investigated the growth behavior of some trees under abiotic stress in the El-Kassasin zone and the mild climatic ecology region after 35 years of exotic species afforestation. It was one tree on the farm had better growth parameters than others in the same area. All the trees were marked with T1, and the unexpected super-growth tree was marked with T2. The recorded data illustrates the morphology of the leaves and leaflets of African mahogany. The leaflets of T2 are more oval and wider than those of T1. Conversely, there were variations in the leaflet architecture of K. senegalensis T1 had acute and parallel secondary veins, while T2 had short and curved secondary vein leaflets. Tree T2 (23%) had a greater phloem thickness compared to T1. The xylem thickness and pith diameter of T2 are more increment than those of T1. On other side, 13 bands were common (monomorphic) for both genotypes. The (ISSR) analysis primer generated variable band patterns and showed that the polymorphism marker detected T1 and T2 (52.57 and 32.65%), respectively. The recorded data showed that K. senegalensis T2 trees had significantly increased growth parameters compared to the T1 trees. Conversely, leaves of K. senegalensis T2 have more enhanced photosynthetic pigments and total sugar percentage than T1 trees.