Identification of Castanea Spp. Cultivars Using Burr and Nut Morphological Characteristics

This study was conducted to develop effective methods for chestnut cultivar identification based on the burrs and nuts morphological characteristics using the major chestnut cultivars in Korea. A total of 23 morphological characteristics comprising 13 quantitative characteristics and 10 qualitative characteristics of 29 major cultivars of chestnut (Castanea spp.) growing in the Chestnut Gene Bank of Korea Forest Research Institute (KFRI) were investigated. Of the 23 quantitative and qualitative characteristics of burr and nut in fall only burr characteristics were useful for identifying varieties such as ‘Tanzawa’, ‘Isseumo’, ‘Yamatowase’ and ‘Parkmi2’. New varieties released by KFRI such as ‘Daehan’, ‘Mipung’ and ‘Jangwon’ showed significant differences in nut characteristics in particular and all but ‘Sandae’ and ‘Eunsan’ of the 29 varieties (93.1%) could be effectively identified based on the nut characteristics. For identifying varieties the logic model using the discrete data was equivalently effective as the identification key based on the qualitative morphological characteristics. Of the discrimination model using the measurable data of nut and burr characteristics, Fisher's linear discriminant function rule which showed 18.1% of misidentification rate appeared to be most appropriate for  the identification of varieties.

 Key Words : Castanea spp., morphological characteristics, identification, discrimination model