Abstract: Little progress has been made for a long time in Chinese jujube cross breeding and none
new cultivar via artificial cross-breeding has been released so far. Only approximate 0.01% of pollinated
flowers produce fruits with hybrid seeds in conventional manual hybridization as a result of difficult
manual emasculation （flower very small），very low fruit set rate and severe embryo abortion. After over
10 years of study on the fruiting characteristics and pollen viability as well as exploration of embryos
culture with different ages，we made a substantial progress in jujube cross breeding by overcoming the two
bottleneck techniques，i.e.，emasculation and embryo rescue. Here we presented the design scheme and
practical techniques for high efficient cross breeding of Chinese jujube，including breeding targets，parent
selection，controlled hybridization without emasculation，pollination methods，acquirement of hybrids by
embryo culture and molecular identification of hybrids. The design scheme has been carried out and
further improved in practice. Two hundred and eleven hybrids from 2 cross combinations were obtained
via controlled hybridization for the first time. The development prospects of Chinese jujube cross breeding were also discussed.

Key words: Chinese jujube, cross breeding, design, emasculation, embryo rescue