Hardy Kiwifruit (A. arguta (Sieb. & Zucc.) Planch. ex Miq.) is one of the valuable species due to their edible fruits, high content of nutritious substances, especially abundant of vitamin C, and distinctive flavor and medicinal usage. Therefore, we have developed a new cultivar of A. arguta with large fruits and high yielding. For this, 168 candidate plants were collected from wild populations in 12 locations from 4 provinces (Chungbuk, Gangwon, Gyeongnam, and Jeonbuk) from 1985 to 1987. A clone bank that contained highly productive, superior genotypes of A. arguta was assembled in 1988, and 32 excellent clones were selected in 1996 through the clone tests for growth and fruiting. From these clones, we have been regularly investigated yield trials for the fruiting characteristics to evaluation of major agronomic traits, which are the average of Fruit Length (FL), Fruit Width (FW), Weight of Fruit (WF) and Individual Yield (IY), during consecutive 6 years (1997~2002). Finally, we have selected the new A. arguta cultivar, “Dae-Sung” with large fruits and high yielding and registered as a new variety denomination and certificated for variety production and merchandising in 2006 (Table 1). This cultivar is characterized by a diploid plant and oblong type in the fruit shape, and is particularly characterized by large fruit size (Fig. 1, Table 3). The major agronomic traits of this cultivar showed the large selection effect with an average of 41.6 mm (FL), 29.9 mm (FW), 18.9 g (WF), and 25.9 kg (IY), which are 28.8%, -0.7%, 16.7%, and 232.0% compared to the mean of 29 sample trees, respectively (Table 2).

• Yong Seok Jang
• Moon Ho Lee
• Byung Sil Lee