A Comparative Study on Berry Characteristics of Large Berry Cultivars of Sea Buckthorn

Berry characteristics of 11 Russian Cultivars and 1 Mongolian Cultivar of seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) were studied at 2 sites, Shuiling of Heilongjiang and Denkou of Inner Mongolia. The 100-berry-weight was 38. 33-67. 59 g and 32. 87-63. 85 g of the cultivars in Suiling and Dengkou respectively. Except for 1 cultivar, the 100-berry-weight of the other 11 cultivars in Dengkou was lower than that in Suiling, indicating that the berry weight of seabuckthorn was correlated with the latitudes of the cultivar origins. Significant linear correlation was found between width and length of berry. The berry length, the width and the length/width ratio were all significantly correlated with the 100-berry-weight, therefore, these 3 traits describing berry shape can be used to predict 100-berry-weight. The content of vitamin C in berry juice of the tested large berry cultivars varied from 342. 6 mg kg-1 to 1 770. 3 mg·kg-1, which evidently lower than that of the o-riginal Russian cultivars varying from 470 mg·kg-1 to 3 300 mg·kg-1. The content of vitamin E and total flavones in berry juice of the 12 tested large berry cultivars were 4-29 mg·kg-1 and 36-429 mg · kg-1 respectively.