Our breeding programme is selecting superior trees that produce high quality, durable timber. The younger we can identify superior trees, the faster we can make significant genetic improvement in wood properties
The key wood properties of interest in the NZDFI programme are:
Measuring wood properties is laborious, but a successful tree breeding programmes must rely on assessing large numbers of trees. To overcome this, we have developed techniques to quickly and reliably measure wood properties in young trees. This enables us to select superior trees early in tree breeding programmes, speeding up the selection cycle.
Our latest Wood Quality Research Plan is available here (March 2017).
Collecting samples to test for heartwood content.
Varying heartwood in trees the same species and age.
Taking samples to test for growth strain from a Marlborough trial site.
Dr Clemens Altaner leads the NZDFI wood quality research team at the School of Forestry.
We have four PhD researchers working on aspects of wood quality: Nick Davies, Gayatri Mishra, Yanjie Li, and Fei Guo.
Visit the School of Forestry website to learn more about wood quality research.
