Index

Overview

Coastal Tree Breeding

• Coastal Douglas-fir
• Western redcedar
• Yellow cypress
• Sitka spruce
• Western white pine (coastal)
• Western hemlock

Interior Tree Breeding

• Interior spruce
• Interior Douglas-fir
• Western larch
• Lodgepole pine
• Western white pine (interior)

Overview

In the late 1950's, as reforestation efforts on the coast of B.C. were starting up and expanding, there was the realization that forest trees could benefit like our crop species, from some selection of more desirable individuals from the wild. These 'plus-trees' could then be put into seed orchards (as we do with our fruit trees), and further selected and crossed to provide a higher level of improvement.

Work in Coastal Douglas-fir started in the late 1950's with inbreeding studies, and with wide crossing studies conducted by Dr. Allan Orr-Ewing. Later on, the more traditional 'recurrent' selection programs were started from intensive plus-tree selection in the low elevation coastal region of B.C. The program expanded in 1968 with improvement programs starting in interior spruces (Picea glauca, and its hybrids) and currently we have over 40 breeding and improvement programs, for different species and seed planning zone combinations. These are all set out and evaluated on an annual basis within the auspices of the Forest Genetics Council of B.C.

Many changes to classical breeding approaches used in domesticated plants and animal species have had to be made in order to accommodate the unique biological features of forest trees. The reproductive biology, geographic patterns of genetic variation in the species, maintaining adaptive genetic variation, and the maintenance of wild forest reserves, are issues that are somewhat unique to forest tree improvement and genetic resource management. We hope that we can give the reader a small overview of recent advances, and the current state of the improvement programs in B.C. are in the following pages.