China's soils tend to be phosphate deficient. Application of phosphorus fertilisers to the soil is yield and cost ineffective as much of the phosphate applied is rapidly locked-in and is inaccessible to the crop. Chinese Institutes have established intensive wheat breeding programmes to generate wheat varieties that produce adequate yields and grain quality in such soils. Three such wheat cultivars have been identified with good performance characteristics in the field. These three cultivars are thought to harbour chromosome translocations that may confer enhanced phosphate scavenging abilities to the plants. The isolation and study of the expression of high-affinity phosphate transporters in tissues of these wheats, in two of the donor wheatgrasses and in another widely planted Chinese wheat variety is presented and the first full-length sequence of a wheat phosphate transporter and partial clones of several other putative phosphate transporters are reported. Relative quantitative reverse-transcription -polymerase chain-reaction was used to demonstrate that different phosphate transporters have different expression patterns within a given variety and respond differently to phosphate deprivation. The significance of the genetic background for these findings and for the different phosphate acquisition properties of the wheats under study is discussed.

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Castanopsis hystrix, a timber resource from Southeast Asia, is characterized by rapid growth and high yield, but plantation quality and efficiency improvements are required. Twenty-year-old C. hystrix experimental forests in Yulin, Liuzhou, and Pingxiang in Guangxi Province, China, comprising 21 open-pollinated half-sib families, were used in this study. Genetic variations in the growth (tree height, diameter at breast height (DBH), and volume (V)) and morphological (height to live crown base (HCB), crown width (CW), and branch angle) traits were assessed, and the genetic parameters were estimated to clarify the genotype × environment interaction effects. The average values for the tree height, DBH, V, HCB, CW, and branch angle were 16.33 m, 17.25 cm, 0.21 m3, 6.68 m, 2.15 m, and 45.45°, respectively. The most important sources of variance for the tree height, DBH, V, and HCB were the block and family, whereas the location, family, and family × location had significant impacts on the tree height, DBH, V, and HCB (p < 0.01). The family heritability for each trait was 0.35, 0.38, 0.62, and 0.19, respectively. Excellent families with strong adaptability and genetic stability were identified using BLUP–GGE biplots for single and multiple traits. The results provide a theoretical basis for the efficient cultivation of C. hystrix in South China.