Study on Variation in Traits of Seed and Seedling and Their Inheritancein Castanopsis tibetana

Seed collections were carried out from 16 mother Castanopsis tibetana trees in Longquan of Zhejiang and Xiuning of Anhui province onOctober of 2013. On February and March, sowing was made in Chun’an, Zhejaing province, and seedlings were transplanted on April.Determinations were conducted on January of 2015 and 2016. Results demonstrated that the seed vertical diameter ranged from 9.66 to 25.19 mm,seed transverse diameter from 8.05 to 19.89 mm, seed shape index from 0.79 to 1.79, germination rate from 6.67% to 87%, seed viability from 10.00%to 93.33% , single seed weight from 0.93 to 2.54 g, height of 1-year seedling from 3.00 to 40.00 cm, ground diameter from 0.66 to 7.13 mm of 1-yearseedling, height of 2-year seedling from 9.00 to 124.8 cm, and from 1.62 to 12.07 mm in ground diameter of 2-year seedling. Germination rate hadthe highest variable coefficient, about 61.31%, and the lowest was seed shape index (11.67%). There were significant difference of seed phenotype,germination trait and seedling growth among different provenances and mother trees. Seed quality had effect on seedling growth. The experimentsshowed that seeds from Longquan and their seedlings had lower variance but better performance than that from from Xiuning. Germination rate, seed viability and single seed weight of the same provenance had a relatively high heritability（0.50, 0.83 and 0.90）, but in terms of mother trees, themaximum heritability was found in seed shape index (0.80), followed by germination rate (0.70). The heritability of seed size and seedling growthtraits was low.