工业人工林发展与材性育种

文中介绍了世界上因工业人工林发展的需要所开展的材性变异和改良研究的现状及基本成就,并针对我国即将兴起的材性育种的需要提出了材性育种中的一些原则性考虑。

Development of Industrial Plantations and Tree Breeding for Wood Improvement

In order to solve the problem of short supply of timber, the development of intensively managed industrial plantations with short rotation will be deemed an important task in future forest management. However, in comparison with the timber produced in natural forests, the timber produced in intensively managed plantations has low specific gravity and short fibers. Large proportion of timber supply will be that from young trees with the increasing development of industrial plantations having a short rotation. Rational utilization of the timber produced in intensively managed plantations demands that the wood processing industry must learn how to use this sort of timber. At the same time tree breeding should be conducted to improve the quality of timber produced in industrial plantations. This paper gives a comprehensive review of the primary achievements in researches on the variation in timber quality in USA and other countries in recent 30 years, indicating a possible approach to the improvement of timber quality. It is also suggested that the past major objective in tree breeding in China was promotion of growth, and now emphasis should be placed both on promotion of tree growth and on improvement of timber quality. Especially, importance should be attached to the improvement of the specific gravity of wood. In choice of timber quality, a procedure of progressive selection should be practiced. In initial selection when selection is made in large populations,external visible characters should be selected. Only in late period of selection, timber quality of a few excellent individuals should be determined. This procedure of selection needs less money and gives quick good results.It is emphatically pointed out that clonal breeding is the fundamental way of tree breeding for improvement of timber quality.