Genome of Castanea mollissima

Chinese chestnut is one of most important nut tree in China, and its production accounts for 83.08% in the world chestnut production. In particular, the chestnut blight fungus devastatingly destroyed 4 billion of American chestnuts as a predominant forest tree species by 1950s. Due to the natural resistance to disease and pest, especially to chestnut blight, Chinese chestnut has been used to be important breeding materials in America and Europe. Although the traditional systematic breeding projects by crossing with Chinese chestnut have been performed to restore American chestnut over 50 years in the United States, the achievement is very limited. The high-quality whole genome assembly of C. mollissima will be a valuable resource to further genetic improvement and breeding for disease resistance and nut quality