The Serino chestnut contributes to the high quality of chestnut growing in Irpinia, even though in this case the province of Avellino has to share its paternity and merits with Salerno. The cultivation area indicated by the regulations for the production of the Serino IGP Chestnut (at the moment the application for IGP recognition is about to be presented) is the Alta Valle del Sabato and Monti Picentini, including several communes in the province of Salerno. The spread of the first chestnut woods in the area dates back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries and were the work of the Benedictine Monks from Cava dei Terreni.

According to evidence found in valuable manuscripts from the time, the monks dedicated themselves to the care and improvement of the sweet chestnut woods present on their properties scattered over the region. Afterwards, the presence of thriving chestnut farming in the Serino area is documented in eighteenth-century texts and nineteenth-century market lists.
The bond between the local people and this species has remained strong and constant through time, so much so that it has overcome the recurrent crises due to plant-health problems, particularly the scourge of the cortical cancer, recorded since the fifties.
The name "Serino Chestnut" refers to two local cultivars, the Montemarano and the Verdole. The first also goes by the name of Santimango or Marrone di Avellino and is considered by experts to be one of the best Italian varieties.
It produces medium-large fruit (from 50 up to maximum 70 per kg), with a milky-white seed with grooves on the surface and sweet, crunchy flesh. These are the qualities that make it so popular with consumers and the processing industry.
The Verdole, in turn, is used above all as a pollinator variety, even though in many low valleys in the Serino area it is the predominant cultivarfor its resistance to fog and cryptograms. The fruit are medium-sized, with white flesh which has quite a good sweet flavour, therefore ideal for fresh consumption. Both varieties are favoured by the environmental and climatic features of the area and cultivated respecting the environment.
The harvest begins in the second half of October, when the fruit are fully ripe. Chestnut growing ensures a good income for the whole of the local community and can be considered the back¬bone of the economy in the Alta Valle del Sabato and the Monti Picentini. Here, the 'Italian breadfruit tree, as Pascoli defined it, covers over 5,000 hectares, which amount to more than a quarter of the whole surface area devoted to sweet chestnut woods in the provinces of Avellino and Salerno. Every year it supplies on average about 100,000 quintals of produce, of which half is exported while the other half is split, in roughly equal proportions, between processing industries and fresh consumption.