The complete chloroplast genome of a variety of Castanea mollissima 'Hongli' (Fagaceae)

Abstract Chinese Chestnut (Castanea mollissima) is an economically valuable tree in China. More than 300 wild and cultivated varieties were reported. In this study, we reported and characterized the complete chloroplast genome sequence of Chinese Chestnut cultivar ‘Hongli’, variant dominant strain with high yield, good quality of nuts, especially with red coloration in their leaves, twigs, and involucres of fruits. The chloroplast genome was determined to be 160,871？bp in length. It contained large single-copy (LSC) and small single-copy (SSC) regions of 90,498 and 18,971？bp, respectively, which were separated by a pair of 25,701？bp inverted repeat (IR) regions. The genome is predicted to contain 130 genes, including 83 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, 8 rRNA genes, and 2 pseudo genes. The overall GC content of the genome is 36.7%. A phylogenetic tree reconstructed by 25 chloroplast genomes reveals that C. mollissima 'Hongli' is most closely related to wild C. mollissima that was collected from China