Date: April 19-20, 2017
Location: Islande Hotel, Riga, Latvia
One way to mitigate effects of and adapt to climate change in tree breeding is to increase collaborative efforts between breeding and deployment programs in neighboring countries. Therefore a two-day meeting was arranged in Riga to where researchers/breeders from the Nordic and Baltic countries were invited. The main activities concerned connecting breeding and deployment efforts in the different countries by:
- Developing a structured way of exchanging genetic test entries (both from the breeding program and seed orchard crops) and including them in field testing.
- Establishment (and management) of field trials across borders (e.g. Swedish trials in Finland etc.) to cover a wider climatic gradient in test environments.
- Coordination of the management of data from field trials (both pedigree and assessments). Enabling joint analyses in the future.
- Investigating the possibilities of using improved forest regeneration material (FRM) across borders (using common recommendations models).
If successful, such an effort can lead to:
- Increased genetic variation in the breeding programs by making variation (founders) from other countries available. This can be seen as an increased resilience towards climate induced biotic and abiotic threats.
- Selection of more robust/plastic genotypes by increasing the span of test environments and connecting trial series.
- Increased genetic gain by getting better BV predictions (using more data) and possibly increasing the selection base.
- Allowing for a joint analysis of material from many breeding populations in different countries in the future. Breeding values will be comparable cross borders and FRMs from different countries can be compared in a structured way.
- Facilitating studies from other research areas (e.g. resistance related) by developing a network of field trials that cover a wider climatic/environmental gradient than today.
PRESENTATIONS:
Almqvist C. & Högberg K.-A.: Scots pine in south and central Sweden.
Berlin M.: Trans-national collaboration in tree breeding and use of forest reproductive material (FRM)
Haapanen M.: Genetic field testing activities in Finland
Helmersson A.: Trans-national collaboration in southern Sweden
Jansson G.: What is needed to perform joint testing across countries?
Maaten T.: State of Forest Tree Improvement and related activities in Estonia
Persson T.: The use of Finnish material in northern Swedish Pinus sylvestris trials.
Ruotsalainen S.: Recent and past Finnish tree breeding trials with international contributions