Farm Forestry New ZealandA population-genomic and taxonomic study of Eucalyptus argophloia and E. bosistoana
By Seol-Jong Kim – University of Canterbury, December 2019.
Download SWP-T089 (pdf)
Executive summary
The New Zealand Dryland Forests Initiative (NZDFI) aims to create plantations of high-value Eucalyptus timber species in dry environments on the east coast of New Zealand. This would enable the sustainable production of naturally-durable hardwood in New Zealand as a substitute for CCA-treated pine and unsustainably harvested tropical hardwoods. For this purpose, Australian seed collections of five promising Eucalyptus species have been used since 2009 to establish progeny trials in New Zealand. These trials are used to select and breed plant lines with growth and wood properties that are desirable for the New Zealand environment. As part of this effort, NZDFI is interested in understanding how genomic and environmental variation interact to influence commercially important traits in the NZDFI progeny trials. My PhD research project is a component of this project. Its specific research questions are:
- what is the taxonomic identity of a morphologically deviating population of E. bosistoana,
- what is the patterns of genetic diversity and structure of E. argophloia and E. bosistoana, and
- what is the mating system of E. bosistoana. I aim to address these questions using morphological, DNA sequence and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) data. To be able to compile the latter data set, we joined the ‘Eucalyptus 65kSNP Axiom array production and deployment initiative’.
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