工业人工林发展与材性育种

Development of Industrial Plantations and Tree Breeding for Wood Improvement

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。

In order to solve the problem of short supply of timber, the developmentof intensively managed industrial plantations with short rotation will be deemed animportant task in future forest management. However, in comparison with the tim-ber produced in natural forests, the timber produced in intensively managed planta-tions has low specific gravity and short fibers. Large proportion of timber supply willbe that from young trees with the increasing development of industrial plantationshaving a short rotation. Rational utilization of the timber produced in intensivelymanaged plantations demands that the wood processing industry must learn how touse this sort of timber. At the same time tree breeding should be conducted to im-prove the quality of timber produced in industrial plantations. This paper gives acomprehensive review of the primary achievements in researches on the variation intimber quality in USA and other countries in recent 30 years, indicating a possibleapproach to the improvement of timber quality. It is also suggested that the past ma-jor objective in tree breeding in China was promotion of growth, and now emphasisshould be placed both on promotion of tree growth and on improvement of timberquality. Especially, importance should be attached to the improvement of the specif-ic gravity of wood. In choice of timber quality, a procedure of progressive selectionshould be practiced. In initial selection when selection is made in large populations,external visible characters should be selected. Only in late period of selection, timberquality of a few excellent individuals should be determined. This procedure of selec-tion needs less money and gives quick good results.It is emphatically pointed out thatclonal breeding is the fundamental way of tree breeding for improvement of timberquality.