Production Practices and Quality Assessment of Food Crops. Vol. 1

Chestnut, an Ancient Crop with Future 125
Figure 8. Orchard in Cevennes mixing interespecific hybrids with local cultivars.
poly-embryonic nuts, shape, colour and size of the nuts. Pereira-Lorenzo et al.
(1996a) confirmed the importance of the size and the shape of the nuts, but also
the type of male flowering and the spines of the bur.
Several studies of Portuguese cultivars were recently conducted by Pinto et al.
(1990), Pimentel (1990), Pimentel et al. (1992), Gaspar et al. (1992), Gomes and
Pinto de Abreu (1992), Gomes et al. (1993a y b), Guerner and Valdiviesso (1993),
Pimentel-Pereira and Torres-Pereira (1993) and Valdiviesso (1999).
Chinese cultivars described by Liu et al. (1992) and Liu (1993). Liu and Zhou
(1999) identified the excellence of six famous Chinese cultivars (C. mollissima)
out of 28 reported; namely ‘Chu shu hong’, ‘Jiu jia zhong’, ‘Duan zha’, ‘Qin zha’,
‘Jiao zha’ and ‘Jian ding you li’. All of them produce nuts over 10 g (Jiao zha
over 20 g), easy peeling, and excellent kernel quality highly recommended for
cooking and roasting.
Though the crop in Switzerland has been mostly abandoned, some cultivars could
be localised by Conedera et al. (1993).
In Spain, Elorrieta (1949) was the first in reporting Spanish cultivars. In 1993,
Fernandez and Pereira published the first inventory for Galician cultivars in Northwestern
Spain. Later, it presented the variability and the description of those cultivars
(Pereira-Lorenzo et al., 1996a and b; Pereira-Lorenzo and Fernandez-Lopez, 1997
a and b). These studies had been extended to other important areas for nut production
as Asturias, Castilla-León, Extremadura, Andalucía and Canary Islands (Pereira-
Lorenzo et al., 2001c).