Research on high efficient seedling selection of Litchi chinensis Sonn.

To improve the efficiency of seedling selection and to select the individual plants with good traits in litchi，a large number of litchi progeny were cultivated by collecting natural pollinated seeds from different litchi germplasm using methods of dense planting and single-branch shaping. Total about 501 294 seedlings were cultivated in 2009-2014，with an covering area of 6 755 m2. There were 2 145 seedlings flowering in 2011-2015，including 68 seedlings with two-year juvenile phase，930 seedlings with 3-4-year juvenile phase and 1 147 seedlings with 5-6-year juvenile period. Furthermore，there were 608 seedlings setting fruit in 2011-2015. 177 individual plants were preliminarily selected out from them with at least one following good trait like extremely early-maturing，extremely latematuring，high yield，large fruit，high proportion of chicken-tongue seeds and high flesh recovery. A large number of litchi seedlings could be cultivated in the limited land by planting in high density and the technology of single-branch shaping. And many individual plants with target traits could be preliminarily screened out in a short period of time，thus significantly improved the efficiency of seedling selection in litchi.