A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON 'LIEYE' LONGAN

‘Lieye’ is a rare longan cultivar with split leaves first found in Guangxi Province in 2001. Young leaves from the grafted trees of ‘Lieye’ in Guangzhou were used to observe chromosome numbers by improved carbol fuchsin staining method and wall degradation hypotonic method. Some main fruit traits of ‘Lieye’ were also observed. The results showed that 23.53% of leaf cells contained 15 chromosomes, 17.65% contained 18 chromosomes, 45.10% contained 21 chromosomes and 13.73% contained 24 chromosomes, proving that ‘Lieye’ is a mixoploid. ‘Lieye’ only flowered once in ten years after grafting onto rootstocks and 20 fruits were obtained from 2 trees in 2011. The main fruit traits, including average mass (7.08 g), soluble solids content (19.30%), edible rate (63.22%) and seed germination rate (60.00%) were ordinary. Twelve seedlings survived and have integrifolious leaves except for one seedling with split leaves. The chromosome numbers (15, 18, 21, 24) of ‘Lieye’ are less than all the reported diploid cultivars (2n=2x=30) and this may explain the split leaf shape and low seed-setting rate.