Australian hardwoods for fuelwood and agroforestry

• Royal Forest Department, Thailand
• Zimbabwe Forestry Commission, Zimbabwe
• Kenya Forest Research Institute, Kenya
• Kenya Forest Research Institute, Kenya
• Royal Forest Department, Thailand
• Zimbabwe Forestry Commission, Zimbabwe

Acute shortages of fuelwood, now appearing in many developing countries, not only directly depress living standards but commonly have serious indirect consequences. For example, adverse changes in catchment hydrology and accelerated erosion many follow denudation of forested areas, and the burning of animal manures as substitute fuel prevents their important use as fertiliser and thus reduces food production. However, some farm forestry success stories have emerged from such countries, where fuelwood, fodder, building poles and other forest products have been grown successfully.
Australian species, albeit not always wisely chosen, often form an important component of this agroforestry. And wider use of this resource can bring assured benefits, especially in the more difficult situations of water stress and other environmental extremes, or where nitrogen accretion, tree fodder production and soil stabilisation are critical. Sub-Saharan Africa and other tropical and subtropical areas are thus important target areas.
Eucalypts, our most important group of trees, have already become the most extensively planted hardwood genus in the world, but this project will also concentrate on two other important generaAcacia and Casuarina. These contain some species that grow (often rapidly) over a wide range of sites including arid and saline areas, many that yield excellent firewood and some that can be vegetatively propagated. Moreover, most of the species fix atmospheric nitrogen to a greater or lesser extent, making them valuable in mixed cropping systems.
Members of the research team will identify potentially useful tree species from Australia's unique genetic resource, collect representative samples of their seeds, and evaluate and characterise them under a range of conditions in selected developing countries (initially in sub-Saharan Africa and S E Asia) and it Australia. After assessing potential ecological adaptability in more detail, the team will select species for adaptation to stress environments including semi-arid, saline and calcareous conditions, and document their characteristics with special reference to propagation and to treatment and management in cultivation. Close association with other co-operative forestry projects and collaborating institutes in developing countries will encourage adoption of this technology and strengthen the capacity of researchers there.
Field trials in Australia, initially at Gympie and later in other northern Australian localities, will assess about 100 species with a least two provenances of each, selected largely from the Acacia, Casuarina and Eucalyptus genera but including other such as Melaleuca, Tristania and Callitris. Experiments on a range of complementary sites in both Zimbabwe and Kenya as well as in E Asia will involve 50 or more of those species. These trials will provide data on species likely to do well in agroforestry and fuelwood production in the tropics and subtropics. An important part of the project will be the precise identification of material already in use.
Seed collections will constitute the basic resource for the project, and seed of promising species identified during the research will supplement existing collections. In this work, the team will collaborate with the Canadian-based International Development Research Centre, which is currently setting up a forest tree seed centre in Zimbabwe. They also expect to collaborate with other international agencies and bilateral programs, particularly in the evaluation of species for agroforestry.
Within Australia they will maintain close links with several ACIAR Projects: Project 8357 will form an essential component of the work on Casuarina spp.; Project 8326 will evaluate some of the tree species for potential use in integrated farming systems; and Project 8363 will share the same genetic material in the Leucaena genus, as well as nutritional trials on poor tropical soils.
In addition to the core program, supplementary studies of vegetative propagation and salinity tolerance, and means of systematically presenting accumulated data and applying climatic data in species selection will be undertaken in Canberra. A workshop in Gympie, towards the end of the project will review progress.