Inheritance of the Easy-peeling Pellicle Trait of Japanese Chestnut Cultivar Porotan

Abstract

‘Porotan’ is a Japanese chestnut cultivar ( Castanea crenata Sieb. et Zucc.) that was selected from offspring of the cross 550-40 × ‘Tanzawa’ and released in 2006. Its nut is distinguished by a pellicle that is easy to peel after roasting; previously, all Japanese chestnut cultivars were thought to have a pellicle that was difficult to peel. Both 550-40 and ‘Tanzawa’ are Japanese chestnuts, and 550-40 is a selection descended from ‘Tanzawa’. Both 550-40 and ‘Tanzawa’ have a pellicle that is difficult to peel. Among 59 offspring of a cross of 550-40 × ‘Tanzawa’, 12 had an easy-peeling pellicle and 47 had a difficult-peeling pellicle; this ratio is not significantly different from the 1:3 expected ratio for monogenic inheritance based on a chi-square test at P = 0.05. A half-diallel cross without selfings was made among ‘Porotan’, ‘Tanzawa’, and ‘Tsukuba’. All the offspring from ‘Tanzawa’ × ‘Tsukuba’ and from ‘Tsukuba’ × ‘Porotan’ had a difficult-peeling pellicle; in contrast, 39 offspring from ‘Tanzawa’ × ‘Porotan’ segregated in a ratio of 19 difficult-peeling pellicle to 20 easy-peeling pellicle, which is not significantly different from the expected 1:1 ratio for monogenic segregation based on a chi-square test at P = 0.05. These results suggest that the easy-peeling pellicle trait of ‘Porotan’ is controlled by a major recessive gene at a single locus. We designated the pellicle peelability locus as P / p . According to this model, the ‘Tsukuba’ genotype is homozygous-dominant ( PP ), the ‘Tanzawa’ genotype is heterozygous ( Pp ), and the ‘Porotan’ genotype is homozygous-recessive ( pp ).