Better trees through systematic breeding

Abstract

Today I would like to tell you briefly about the efforts of forest geneticists to improve the quality of forest trees. What do we mean by quality? Here, the consumer has the first word. The trees we produce are primarily for timber production, and the timber growing and wood-using industries give us our guidelines. Nevertheless, many of the characteristics sought by these industries are of interest to geneticists working primarily with shade-trees. For example, tolerance of freezing, resistance to drought and disease, growth rate, stem form, crown shape, color, and flower characters — all these are certainly of imprtance in determining the quality of a shade tree. Therefore 1 hope that what I have to say about forest-tree improvement will illustrate how the science of genetics may be applied to satisfy your needs. You can see that forest geneticists and geneticists concerned with shade-tree improvement have a lot in common.

Citation

Callaham, Robert Z. 1957. Better trees through systematic breeding. In: 33rd National Shade Tree Conference Proceedings. 1957. p: 272-275