Comparative study of three species of Malvatheca (Bombacoideae and Malvoideae (Malvaceae sensu lato)using Morphological, Anatomical and RAPD-PCR analyses.

Bombacoideae and Malvoideae are two subfamilies belong to family Malvaceae sensu lato (s. l.). These two subfamilies had long been problematic at the taxonomical level. Moreover, some genera have not been adequately sampled for sufficiently variable molecular markers. In this work, we selected three species (Bombax ceiba, Ceiba pentandra and Ceiba speciosa) that are related to Bombacoideae and Malvoideae. They were mainly selected because they are commonly present in Egypt, and exhibit high medicinal values and contain cotton Silk fiber in their fruits which is valuable in fabric industry. In this study, we compared these three plants from the taxonomical point of view as an initial step to determine their characteristic features, and investigated their genomic DNA banding patterns using randomly amplified bands (RAPD- PCR). This was done not only to determine the phylogenetic relationships but also to find new molecular markers that will help in their specific characterization.