A Study On The Resources Of The Wild Fruit And Nut Trees In Central China

The middle region of China is usually called as Central China, which is consisted of Hubei Province, Chongqing City and the other provinces' partial districts, such as the northern Hunan and southern henan, northeastern Guizhou and Sichuan, northwestern Jiangxi, southeastern Shanxi and western Anhui . The geographic coordiates of the region are 107°-117°E. and 26.5°-34°N. ; And its total area is approximate 750 000 square kilometers.As a transition area from the eastern plains and hills to the western plateaus and mountains; and a transition zone between the southern sub-tropical and the northern warm temperate zone in China, Central China has a varied topography, a complex climates ; it is rich in rainfall and fertile in soil. So many of these ecological elements make the region become one of the most plenty and diverse plant distribution regions in China. More than 6 000 species spermatophytes are distributed in theregion, which contains 597 species, 2 subspecies, 138 varieties and 4 formations of wild fruit and nut trees that belong to 99 genera and 50 families ( Cronquist A : An Integrated System of Classification of Flowering Plants). The main families are Juglandaceae ( 3 genera and 14 species.), Fagaceae (5 g., 43 sp.), Moraceae (5 g., 28 sp.), Lardizabalaceae (5 g., 14 sp.), Schisandraceae ( 2 g., 16 sp.), Grossulariaceae ( 1 g., 27 sp.), Rosaceae (17 g., 260 sp.), Rutaceae (7 g., 45 sp.), Vitaceae ( 2 g., 27 sp.), Actinidiaceae ( 1 g., 44 sp.), Theacaeae(1 g. 28 sp.), Elaeagnaceae ( 1 g., 23 sp.), Cornaceae ( 2 g.,14 sp.), Ericaceae ( 1 g.,17 sp.), Ebenaceae ( 1 g.,14 sp.) and so on.Some of the wild fruit and nut trees would be used as germplasm resources and genetic materials for breeding. And most of their fruits would be used to make oils, foods, drinks, pigments and medicines etc., so in the paper the author suggests that so much of these good resources should be still further developed and comprehensively utilized, and puts forward some proposals, such as to select fine varieties from wild fruit and nut trees, to cultivate multiple benefit fruit and nut forest, to build up a characteristic fruit and nut trees zone, and to enlarge wild fruit processing fields . The Conservation of the rare and endangered fruit and net species is also emphasised in the paper.