chestnuts, may have very far reaching influence
and we feel quite hopeful for it. That is growing seedling progenies of
certain parent trees. I want to tell you our experience with it. We
started our work on breeding and selection of tung nuts in 1938, and we
have tested now over 600 parent trees that were especially selected. Out
of those six hundred we have released a total of six horticultural
varieties, for asexual propagation. But out of those six we have three
trees, the seed of which will produce seedling progenies that come very
true to the type of the parent tree. One of those released we know as
the Lampton variety. It will produce from 95 to 100 per cent of its
seedlings, that are so true to type that you can identify them in the
nursery. At the end of the first season you plant 95 to 100 per cent of
the remaining trees in the orchard and anybody can identify the trees.

In the case of budded trees we have the variability of the rootstocks,
which affects the growth. Since that particular variety has been
released there has not been one single nut of that variety crushed.
Every single seed is grown to tree size, to plant in a new orchard. It
has taken us 12 years to reach that stage, but that one variety is
probably the most outstanding thing we have. There is a slight variation
in the trees but not as much as you have in other trees.

Now, with Chinese chestnuts, we planted seedlings that were grown from
the seed of a parent tree at Beltsville. We planted a thousand trees.
There were seedlings grown from seed produced by different parent trees.
Out of those thousand there wasn't a single one outstanding. Yet in one
lot of seedlings which was planted in Georgia, every one of the
seedlings grown from the seeds of that selected tree produced such high
quality nuts that we haven't cut out a single tree. There just hasn't
been any off types. Now we have gone a step further. We had one called
selection 7932 which came into bearing very early. We have had those
trees grown from seed. The seedling at three years of age produced a
pound of nuts, the seedling having the characteristic of its mother. We
have hopes that before many years we shall be able to produce parent
trees or clonal lines in which the seed taken from those line and
planted will give us uniform seedlings.

I don't want you folks to get the idea we have these parent trees or
seed from them that are available. I mention it because a lot of you are
gr