Farm Forestry New ZealandImproving Heartwood of Durable Eucalypts - Manuscript
By Y Li and C M Altaner, June 2017.
Download SWP-T024 (pdf)
Executive summary
The New Zealand Drylands Forests Initiative (NZDFI) aims to establish a new hardwood forest industry based on naturally durable eucalypts. As key a product NZDFI has identified sustainably-grown naturally durable posts and poles for the agricultural industry as an alternative to CCA treated pine (Millen, 2009). For these products natural durability is essential. But natural durability is also highly variable in the resource. To ensure a quality product the variability can be reduced by genetic selection. NZDFI’s wood quality research programme addresses the variable performance of the timber through a breeding programme. However, incorporating heartwood quality into a breeding programme is not straight forward and requires a novel approach which is able to cope with the necessary large sample numbers. NZDFI has developed a novel sampling system as well as heartwood quality assessment. This will facilitate a viable hardwood forest industry based on naturally durable eucalypts.
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