The poster presents the main ideas and some results of the five year project funded by Finnish Forest Cluster strategic centre (Finnish Bioeconomy Cluster, FIBIC, from 2012). Our study concentrated on the important factors in understanding and enhancing the exploitation of the naturally durable Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) heartwood. The main aims of our project were to develop a high throughput screening methods for heartwood stilbenes, to describe the natural genetic variation in heartwood extractives in progeny trials and in natural stands, and to study the possibilities of selective seed harvest in seed orchards. In the concentration of heartwood stilbenes wide and strongly genetically determined variation was found. This would offer large genetic gains in traditional selective breeding. However, chemical heartwood quality traits are not included in the Scots pine breeding program and thus another kind of approach should be acquired. According to our study selective seed harvest from seed orchards seems to be a promising way to get reforestation material that has genetic potential to produce high-quality heartwood as mature trees. Unfortunately the slow chemical analysis is still the best way to quantify stilbenes. Thus our work on finding the fast and reliable stilbene screening method for tree breeding purposes continues.
Keywords: Scots pine, heartwood, extractives, variation, selection, screening methods
Authors
Harju A.M.
Finnish Forest Research Institute, Punkaharju, Finland
Partanen J.
Finnish Forest Research Institute,Suonenjoki, Finland
Venäläinen M.
Finnish Forest Research Institute, Punkaharju, Finland,
Kärkkäinen K.
Finnish Forest Research Institute
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