'Jili 1', a new chestnut variety with early precocity and high yield

Abstract: 'Jili 1' is a middle-season, table chestnut with excellent appearance. The seeding was derivedfrom a cross between‘Yanming'and‘Yanshanzaofeng'in 2002 at Changli Institute of Pomology, HebeiAcademy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences. It was initially selected in 2005 for its very early fruiting, high quality, high yield, strong stress resistance. After regional adaptability testing at three sites of Hebeiprovince (including Changli, Xinglong and Kuancheng) over nine years from 2006 to 2015, it was finally se-lected in 2016.‘Jili 1'is a tall tree, vigorous, ramose crown and semi-open tree gesture. Main branches areglabrous and brown, young branches are glabrous and grey-white. Matured leave is dark-green, crenatelyserrated, elliptic, acuminate, 17.5 cm long, 8.0 cm wide, and veins are densely pubescent. Catkin is ivoryyellow, 10.0 cm long. Flower shape is upright. Bur shape is ellipse. Spine bundle is green-yellow, hard, in-termediated density, and large angle. The nut is brown, its luster is good, and side nut shape is ellipse. Itsflesh is fine and smooth. The average fruit weight 8.40 g, maximum fruit weight 13.10 g. 2.40 nuts per bur.The water content is 20.1%, the soluble sugar content is 20.1%, the starch content is 49.8%, the protein con-tent is 4.85%, and vitamin C is 0.325 mg·g^-1. Quality is excellent. The fruit development period is 90 d andit matures at the middle of September in Yanshan mountain areas of Hebei province. 8.4 catkins per fruitbranch. The germination rate of bearing base shoot is 45.7%, the proportion of fruit branches is 71%. It is re-sistant to barren, cold, drought, red mite and chestnut fruit-borer, and high resistant to chestnut blight. Thefruit has very long storage-life, after storage of 8 months, the nut rotting rate is only 3.7%. Suitable cultiva-tion area is mountain and hilly area cultivated Yanshan chestnut in the north of China, this variety can bearfruits next year after grafted, trees grafted after three years has high yield potential of 4 730.4 kg·hm^-2. Thisvariety is suitable for the steep slope mountain with barren soil, spacing in the rows and spacing betweenrows are 4 m×4 m. The configuration of pollinizer is ‘Dabanhong' and ‘Yanjing'.