Development Actinidia chinensis is a plant native to mountainous areas of central China, including the modern provinces of
Hunan and
Hubei. While never formally cultivated, fruit of
Actinidia chinensis were often harvested from the wild and sold at markets in China. During the early-to-mid 20th century, a market developed in New Zealand for a closely related green-fleshed species,
Actinidia chinensis var. deliciosa, then known to New Zealanders as Chinese gooseberries. By 1959, cultivars that had developed in New Zealand were being marketed as
kiwifruit. In the 1970s, Chinese horticulturists began surveying wild
germplasm of
Actinidia species growing in mountainous central China, in order to develop cultivars which could compete with the popularity of New Zealand kiwifruit cultivars. In 1982, the first reports of red pulp in kiwifruit were made in
Actinidia chinensis var.
chinensis fruit in
Hubei Province, China, and later from
Henan and other parts of China. with distinctions being made based on the length of the fruit stalk, smaller fruit size, and the red inner pericarp of the fruit flesh. Hongyang was developed from seeds collected in 1982 from wild
Actinidia chinensis plants by the Sichuan Provincial Natural Resources Institute and the Agricultural Bureau of Cangxi County, Sichuan. The seeds were sown in 1984, and by 1986, 921 plants had produced their first fruit. In 1990, a plant was selected from these clonal populations and designated as "Red Sun No. 1." Following field trials and evaluation, the variety was officially registered as Hongyang by the Sichuan Provincial Crop Variety Registration Authority in 1997. It also paved the way for development of later red kiwifruit varieties, including Donghong, which by 2023 was the second most widely cultivated red-fleshed kiwifruits in China. Developed through a collaboration between Italian company, Jingold and Wuhan Botanical Garden in 2012, the Donghong variety is also marketed under the name Oriental Red. Gold and red kiwifruit varieties greatly grew in popularity in China in the 2000s. By 2002, almost half of kiwifruit plantings in the country were for gold and red
Actinidia chinensis var.
chinensis varieties, of which two-thirds of plantings were for red kiwifruit. Zespri had been working on a different cultivar in the early 2010s, but trials were halted due to this variety being impacted by
Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae. ==Cultivars==