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Index
Overview
Coastal Tree Breeding
Interior Tree Breeding
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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.
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