Italian Company Licensed for Global Propagation of a Kiwifruit Cultivar Developed by CAS Botanists

摘要

The CAS Wuhan Botanical Garden (WBG) recently entered into an agreement with the Italian company Kiwigold Consortium to grant the worldwide propagation and commercialization rights of a novel, hairless, yellow-fleshed variety of kiwifruit. This has the potential to have a significant impact on the international kiwifruit industry. Named Jintao (golden peach in Chinese), the new cultivar (Actinidia chinensis Planch) was cultivated by a team of pomologists headed by Dr. Huang Hongwen, WBG director, from wild strains collected during a plant germplasm survey in southeast China's Jiangxi Province in 1981. It took the researchers over 12 years to evaluate and study the wild genotype in the garden. Trials of the cultivar were conducted with good results in Italy, France and Greece from 1998 to 2000. Noted for its higher productivity, better fruit quality and improved heat tolerance, Jintao offers global growers an alternative to Hort l6A, a second-generation flagship strain of the kiwifruit developed by New Zealand breeders.