Ma Zhengtan, PR China

Seabuckthorn is a pioneer tree species in the rehabilitation of the degraded land in the Western China. The area of the degraded land is about 1.5 million k㎡. It is not possible to grow seabuckthorn in such huge area by using vegetative propagation saplings. Usually seabuckthorn afforestation is done by growing seedlings. Utilization of hybrid vigour by using F1 can produce large amount of seeds and the F1 plants have much stronger vitality and stress tolerance than the plants propagated by cuttings. There were 10 combinations of hybridization between Russian varieties and Chinese varieties were done in 1995-2001. More than 1600 hybrid seedlings were grown in the field. The results shown that the hybrid plants have obvious characteristics in vigorous growth, high yield, less thorn, resistance to shoot blight and late fruit mature.