It is also an agricultural centre, producing dates, cereals, fruits, and vegetables.
Now of lesser importance, Ḥāʾil is primarily a regional market and oasis, producing dates, fruit, and grain.
A major irrigation project (completed 1964) transformed the oasis into one of the largest agricultural areas in Saudi Arabia, producing dates, alfalfa, rice, fruits, and vegetables.
The region produces date palms, other fruits (e.g., grapes), and vegetables (e.g., lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons).
A considerable disadvantage of intraspecific calibrations is that they will often produce date estimates with a larger degree of uncertainty than those made using external calibrations.
Most of the commercial laboratories are doing their best to ensure the true to typeness of the produced date plant material.
Molecular clock methods produce date estimates as ancient as 1,600 Mya [ 88] but the Bayesian relaxed molecular clock approach gives much younger dates of 872-1,127 mean(mean 983 Mya) [ 22] which overlaps with our estimate.
RNE/FAO assisted Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to establish tissue culture for date palm and screening techniques for Bayoud disease in order to produce date palm trees with improved fruit yield and resistance to Bayoud disease.
It also evaluated the effect of using the Oryzeae phytolith and associated cuticle fossils for the outgroup, which have been shown to produce date estimates that are incompatible with those from other data [ 9].
More generally, evolutionary relationships within the monocotyledonous species [ 32- 34] and in the Zingiberales in particular [ 35, 36], have produced date estimates for the divergence of the Musaceae (61-110 Myandand the genus Musa (51 Mya).
The area produces dates, and there is a date-packing factory at Al-Badrashayn, near the west bank of the Nile.
