American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2016, 7, 1304-1315 Published Online June 2016 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ajps http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2016.78125 How to cite this paper: El Sherbeny, E.A., Morsy, A.A. and Magdy, M. (2016) Soil Characteristics Influence the Selection of Dominant Plant Genotypes Inhabiting Wadi Sudr, Egypt. American Journal of Plant Sciences, 7, 1304-1315. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2016.78125 Soil Characteristics Influence the Selection of Dominant Plant Genotypes Inhabiting Wadi Sudr, Egypt Esraa Attia El Sherbeny 1 , Amal Ahmed Morsy 2 , Mahmoud Magdy 3* 1 Genetics Resources Department, Desert Research Center, Ministry of Agriculture, Cairo, Egypt 2 Botany Department, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt 3 Genetics Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt Received 20 May 2016; accepted 19 June 2016; published 22 June 2016 Copyright © 2016 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract Rangeland plant community and species composition are known to be related to specific soil properties. The current study investigated the ecological influence (soil characteristics) on the selection and distribution of ecological-related genotypes of dominant xerophyte species in Wa- diSudr of Egypt. AFLP analysis reflected the genetic profile of the samples species from two altitu- dinal ranges (up and midstream) and was compared statistically with the differences of their in- habiting soil characteristics on two depth levels (20 and 40 cm) using Mantel test. Correlation values (r) ranged from 0.585 - 0.778 when treating the physical and chemical properties of soil samples regardless its altitudinal area. The correlation confirms that the soil chemical and physi- cal properties influence the selection of a certain genotypes of the dominant xerophytes plants collected from Wadi Sudr of Egypt to certain altitude, while depths at 20 and 40 cm play a key role in the early growth and then the colonization of the selected genotypes, respectively. More studies are needed to exactly test the role and the importance of each of the correlated property to the plant growth and colonization. Keywords Xerophytes, Wadi Sudr-Egypt, Soil Characteristics, F-AFLP, Mantel Test 1. Introduction In arid environments, soils are formed over time as climate and vegetation act on parent rock material. Relative- * Corresponding author.