author(s) : Fahem A. Ahmed, Husseiny A. H. Elgendy, Ibrahim A. El Garf and Abdel-Fattah M. Rizk

Poaceae (grass family) is the fourth largest family in the world, approximately represented by 670 genera and 10,000 species (Boulos 2005).
The Poaceae is a large family of monocotyledonous plants, commonly recognized as grasses, representing the most important group of crops.
This family encompasses several noteworthy cultivated species such as Triticum aestivum L., Oryza sativa L., Zea mays L. and Hordeum vulgare L.
It comprises 7500 species distributed worldwide and with a wide spectrum of climatic adaptations. Remarkably, grasses also show extreme ranges in salinity tolerance, from salt sensitive (glycophytic) to extremely tolerant (halophytic) (Faustino et al., 2019).
Some members of this family are weeds which continue to infest agricultural lands and influence the yield of food and fibre crops, despite improvements in chemicals, biological and mechanical procedures for their control. Primary reasons for the persistence of weeds include their production of large numbers of seeds per plant and the ability of the seeds to survive in various soils (Harrold and Nalewaja, 1977).
Since many plants in this family are utilised for food and forage, their chemistry has been extensively studied.
Terpenes, phenylethylamine, indole and pyrrolizidine alkaloids, flavonoids, other polyphenols and some glycosides were reported in this family (Hegnauer, 1963; Rizk, 1986). The occurrence of β-carbolines in monocotyledonous plants has been restricted to the Gramineae, e.g. those isolated from Phalaris spp. and Arundo donax (Rizk, 1986).
The phytochemical investigations performed in halophytes from the Poaceae family as well as their biological properties were recently reviewed.
Among the 65 genera and 148 species of known halophytic grasses, only 14% of the taxa were studied phytochemically and 10% were subjected to biological evaluation. Notably, in the studied species, a variety of compound families, as well as bioactivities, were demonstrated, highlighting the potential of halophytic grasses (Faustino et al., 2019)