INFLUENCE OF POLLEN ON PELLICLE REMOVABILITY AND NUT WEIGHT OF JAPANESE CHESTNUT (CASTANEA CRENATA SIEB. ET ZUCC.) ‘POROTAN’

‘Porotan’ is a new cultivar of Japanese chestnut that has easily peeled pellicles similar to Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima Blume). The objective of this study was to identify a suitable cultivar that could serve as a pollenizer to ‘Porotan’ by examining the influence of pollen on pellicle removability and nut weight. ‘Porotan’ was pollinated with pollen from the major cultivated chestnut cultivars in Japan [‘Tanzawa’, ‘Tsukuba’ and ‘Ishizuchi’ (Japanese chestnut) and ‘Riheiguri’ (a hybrid between Japanese and Chinese chestnuts)] in 2007 and 2008, and the resulting nuts were used in this study.
Pellicle removability was estimated by measuring the time necessary to remove the pellicle from the kernels of deep-fried nuts.
Peeling time for pellicles ranged from 5.6 s to 6.8 s per nut and no significant difference was observed between pollen donors.
In contrast, nut weight ranged from 26.0 g to 30.1 g; nut weight of ‘Porotan’ trees pollinated by ‘Tsukuba’ was significantly higher than those pollinated by ‘Ishizuchi’, and nut weight of ‘Porotan’ trees pollinated by ‘Riheiguri’ was significantly larger than those pollinated by ‘Tanzawa’ and ‘Ishizuchi’. These results show that cultivars ‘Tsukuba’ and ‘Riheiguri’ are best suited for serving as pollenizers to ‘Porotan’.

I European Congress on Chestnut – Castanea 2009

N. Takada, A. Sato, Y. Sawamura, S. Nishio, T. Saito

pollenizer, HOP method, pollen parent influence, peeling time, peeling ratio

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2010.866.28